Faced with the global pandemic of COVID-19, states have taken and are still taking measures which limit human rights. Pandemic of COVID-19 certainly doesn't represent regular, normal situation, however, regardless of which approach the states have chosen: a state of emergency or not declaring one and adopting additional legislation, if they respected international and national standards of limiting human rights, they managed to maintain the principle of the rule of law as the fundamental and highest ideal of the righteous society, that is, the concept of constitutional government. The hypothesis of this paper is that certain states have used the COVID-19 pandemic to limit certain human rights beyond measure in their territory, thereby endangering the principles of the rule of law and the concept of constitutional rule. The responses of the states to the COVID-19 pandemic are different, so the aim of this paper is to present an overview of the state of emergency institutes that individual states have chosen by declaring it de jure based on the constitution, that is, they have resorted to extraordinary powers provided for by general legal rules or de facto declared a state of emergency and used regular legislation. Each of these ways of solving a crisis situation carries with it certain rules that ensure respect for the rule of law, and these rules have been analyzed in terms of human rights limitation. Furthermore, the practices of individual countries that differ in their approach to dealing with the crisis were analyzed. In conclusion, an analysis of Croatia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was carried out in order to be able to give a final assessment in the context of other European countries as to how well the countries respected their constitutions and laws in their response to the pandemic COVID-19.