Returning to the status quo ante as quickly as possible is frequently named as an important goal of states of emergency. This includes returning to pre-disaster levels of human and civil rights. This chapter analyzes the speed with which countries return to the institutional quality and protection of civil liberties they exhibited prior to an emergency. Across 850 emergencies around the world, we find that a fair share of countries return to their status quo ante very rapidly. However, our results also indicate that in countries with particular political characteristics, the return to the status prior to the emergency can be very lengthy and may not happen de facto. We specifically find that countries in which the emergency constitution allocates more power to the executive during an emergency take longer to reach the status quo ante.