Terror Detentions and the Rule of Law

Abstract

This book describes how 9/11 terrorist attacks provoked panicked responses from the United States and the United Kingdom resulting in detentions of suspected terrorists in a manner incompatible with the due process, fair trial, and equality requirements of the Rule of Law. The legality of the detentions was challenged and found wanting by the highest courts in both the US and UK. The US courts approached these questions as matters within the law of war, whereas the UK courts examined these questions within a human rights criminal law context. The book documents the climate of fear and abuse cultivated by the Bush and Blair administrations and their consequent failures to protect the human rights of individuals suspected of terrorist activity. The analytical focus is on the four US Supreme Court decisions involving the detentions in Guantanamo Bay and four House of Lords decisions involving detentions that began in the Belmarsh Prison. These decisions are analyzed within the contexts of history, criminal law, constitutional law, human rights and international law, and various jurisprudential perspectives. The time-tested criminal law is the normatively correct and most effective means for dealing with suspected terrorists. Preventive, indefinite detention of terrorist suspects upon suspicion of wrongdoing not only contravenes the domestic and international Rule of Law, treaties, and customary international law, it also fuels the fires of terrorism. New legal paradigms for addressing terrorism are shown to be normatively invalid, illegal, unconstitutional, counter-productive, and in conflict with the Rule of Law.