How can we ensure national security against people unafraid to kill themselves along with their victims - people who, self-evidently, will not be deterred by traditional laws which punish offenders after their crimes are committed. This is the challenge for liberal democracies such as Australia. New laws specifically designed to forestall terrorist activity have been a key response. Law and Liberty in the War on Terror describes these laws and debates both their effectiveness and impact on civil liberties. International and domestic commentators from the fields of government, law and political science address questions such as: How does the law define 'terrorism'? Can the criminal justice system accommodate preparatory terrorism offences? Is torture ever acceptable as an interrogative method? What is the role of the judiciary in times of emergency? How do Australia's anti-terrorism laws compare with those of the United Kingdom and New Zealand? How are Australian communities and politics affected by responses to terrorism?"[I] n this book, proponents of the new anti-terrorism laws seek to justify their provisions and opponents argue that the laws go too far. These chapters also show the extent of the changes that have been made to our legal and administrative structures. ... The chapters in this book cannot be dismissed as mere academic analyses. They have to do with the lives and aspirations of all Australians. They ask whether Australia is, and whether it will be, a united, secure, free and confident nation." - Sir Gerard Brennan AC KBE, former Chief Justice of Australia

This book reviews the war on terror since 9/11 from a human rights perspective.

Guidance for maintaining national security without abandoning the rule of law and our democratic values. In an age of global terrorism, can the pursuit of security be reconciled with liberal democratic values and legal principles? During its “global war on terrorism,” the Bush administration argued that the United States was in a new kind of conflict, one in which peacetime domestic law was irrelevant and international law inapplicable. From 2001 to 2009, the United States thus waged war on terrorism in a “no-law zone.” In Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists, Gabriella Blum and Philip Heymann reject the argument that traditional American values embodied in domestic and international law can be ignored in any sustainable effort to keep the United States safe from terrorism. They demonstrate that the costs are great and the benefits slight from separating security and the rule of law. They call for reasoned judgment instead of a wholesale abandonment of American values. They also argue that being open to negotiations and seeking to win the moral support of the communities from which the terrorists emerge are noncoercive strategies that must be included in any future efforts to reduce terrorism.

A former Deputy Attorney General of the United States argues that we must preserve our civil liberties and democratic values while fighting terrorism. On September 11, 2001, the United States began to consider the terrorist threat in a new light. Terrorism was no longer something that happened in other countries on other continents but became a pressing domestic concern for the US government and American citizens. The nation suddenly faced a protracted struggle. In Terrorism, Freedom, and Security, Philip Heymann continues the discussion of responses to terrorism that he began in his widely read Terrorism and America. He argues that diplomacy, intelligence, and international law should play a larger role than military action in our counterterrorism policy; instead of waging "war" against terrorism, the United States needs a broader range of policies. Heymann believes that many of the policies adopted since September 11--including trials before military tribunals, secret detentions, and the subcontracting of interrogation to countries where torture is routine--are at odds with American political and legal traditions and create disturbing precedents. Americans should not be expected to accept apparently indefinite infringements on civil liberties and the abandonment of such constitutional principles as separation of powers and the rule of law. Heymann believes that the United States can guard against the continuing threat of terrorism while keeping its traditional democratic values in place.

A Brookings Institution Press and the Hoover Institution and the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law publication The events of September 11 and subsequent American actions irrevocably changed the political, military, and legal landscapes of U.S. national security. Predictably, many of the changes were controversial, and abuses were revealed. The United States needs a legal framework that reflects these new realities. Legislating the War on Terror presents an agenda for reforming the statutory law governing this new battle, balancing the need for security, the rule of law, and the constitutional rights that protect American freedom. The authors span a considerable swath of the political spectrum, but they all believe that Congress has a significant role to play in shaping the contours of America's confrontation with terrorism. Their essays are organized around the major tools that the United States has deployed against al Qaeda as well as the legal problems that have arisen as a result. • Mark Gitenstein compares U.S. and foreign legal standards for detention, interrogation, and surveillance. • Matthew Waxman studies possible strategic purposes for detaining people without charging them, while Jack Goldsmith imagines a system of judicially reviewed law-of-war detention. • Robert Chesney suggests ways to refine U.S. criminal law into a more powerful instrument against terrorism. • Robert Litt and Wells C. Bennett suggest the creation of a specialized bar of defense lawyers for trying accused terrorists in criminal courts. • David Martin explores the relationship between immigration law and counterterrorism. • David Kris lays out his proposals for modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. • Justin Florence and Matthew Gerke outline possible reforms of civil justice procedures in national security litigation. • Benjamin Wittes and Stuart Taylor Jr. investigate ways to improve interrogation laws while clarifying the definition and limits of torture. • Kenneth Anderson argues for the protection of

An authoritative assessment of the new laws of war and a sensible and sophisticated roadmap for the future of liberty in the Age of Terror America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda, but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people during this global conflict. As debate continues to rage over the legality and ethics of war, Benjamin Wittes enters the fray with a sober-minded exploration of law in wartime that is definitive, accessible, and nonpartisan. Outlining how this country came to its current impasse over human rights and counterterrorism, Law and the Long War paves the way toward fairer, more accountable rules for a conflict without end.

In Terror in the Balance, Posner and Vermeule take on civil libertarians of both the left and the right, arguing that the government should be given wide latitude to adjust policy and liberties in the times of emergency. They emphasize the virtues of unilateral executive actions and argue for making extensive powers available to the executive as warranted. At a time when the 'struggle against violent extremism' dominates the United States' agenda, this important and controversial work will spark discussion in the classroom and intellectual press alike.

An impassioned defence of the civil liberties and the rule of law in the face of increasing pressure for ever greater 'security' 'A rollicking defence of Freedom and Enlightenment in the style of Tom Paine or William Godwin' Spectator 'The even-handed tone of philosophy professor AC Grayling's latest book does not lessen the intensity of its polemical content ... Grayling underlines the seriousness of today's threats to our liberties' Metro "The means of defence against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." James Madison Our societies, says Anthony Grayling, are under attack not only from the threat of terrorism, but also from our governments' attempts to fight that threat by reducing freedom in our own societies - think the 42-day detention controversy, CCTV surveillance, increasing invasion of privacy, ID Cards, not to mention Abu Ghraib, rendition, Guantanamo... As Grayling says: 'There should be a special place for political irony in the catalogues of human folly. Starting a war 'to promote freedom and democracy' could in certain though rare circumstances be a justified act; but in the case of the Second Gulf War that began in 2003, which involved reacting to criminals hiding in one country (Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Pakistan) by invading another country (Iraq), one of the main fronts has, dismayingly, been the home front, where the War on Terror takes the form of a War on Civil Liberties in the spurious name of security. To defend 'freedom and democracy', Western governments attack and diminish freedom and democracy in their own country. By this logic, someone will eventually have to invade the US and UK to restore freedom and democracy to them.' In this lucid and timely book Grayling sets out what's at risk, engages with the arguments for and against examining the cases made by Isaiah Berlin and Ronald Dworkin on the one hand, and Roger Scruton and John Gray on the other, and finally proposes a different way to respond that makes defending the civil liberties on which western society is founded the cornerstone for defeating terrorism.

This book is an analysis and critique of the concepts of ‘exception’ and ‘exceptionalism’ in the context of the politics of liberty and security in the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Since the destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001, a notable transformation has occurred in political discourse and practice. Politicians and commentators have frequently made the argument that the rules of the game have changed, that this is a new kind of war, and that exceptional times require exceptional measures. Under this discourse of exceptionalism, an array of measures have been put into practice, such as detention without trial, ‘extraordinary rendition’, derogations from human rights law, sanction or connivance in torture, the curtailment of civil liberties, and aggressive war against international law. Situating exceptionalism within the post-9/11 controversy about the relationship between liberty and security, this book argues that the problem of exceptionalism emerges from the limits and paradoxes of liberal democracy itself. It is a commentary and critique of both contemporary practices of exceptionalism and the critical debate that has formed in response. Through a detailed assessment of the key theoretical contributions to the debate, this book develops exceptionalism as a critical tool. It also engages with the problem of exceptionalism as a discursive claim, as a strategy, as a concept, as a theoretical problem and as a practice. This is the first book to capture the importance of the exceptionalism debate in a single volume, and will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, political philosophy, IR theory and sociology.

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