Academic Consensus and Legislative Definitions of Terrorism: Applying Schmid and Jongman: Appendices

Abstract

In the decade post September 11, 2001 numerous states have found the need to legislate against terrorism – frequently defining terrorism. In R v Gul the Court of Appeal surveyed some of those legislative definitions in an attempt to discern a customary international law definition of terrorism in one specific context. This paper seeks to broaden that enterprise. In 1989 Schmid and Jongman sent a questionnaire and proposed definition of terrorism to 200 acknowledged terrorism experts; they received 109 responses which they coded according to 22 word categories; the 109 responses triggered, on average eight of the 22 codes. Utilizing the Schmid and Jongman methodology, and based on the R v Gul survey of jurisdictions, this paper examines seven legislative definitions of terrorism. On average, the legislative definitions also triggered eight of the 22 codes. The article examines the correlations and divergences between the academic consensus definition and the legislative definitions.