Soon after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States captured hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world. By the following January the first of these prisoners arrived at the U.S. military's prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were subject to President George W. Bush's executive order authorizing their trial by military commissions. Jess Bravin, the "Wall Street Journal"'s Supreme Court correspondent, was there within days of the prison's opening, and has continued ever since to cover the U.S. effort to create a parallel justice system for enemy aliens. A maze of legal, political, and moral issues has stood in the way of justice--issues often raised by military prosecutors who found themselves torn between duty to the chain of command and their commitment to fundamental American values.While much has been written about Guantanamo and brutal detention practices following 9/11, Bravin is the first to go inside the Pentagon's prosecution team to expose the real-world legal consequences of those policies. Bravin describes cases undermined by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture, clashes between military lawyers and administration appointees, and political interference in criminal prosecutions that would be shocking within the traditional civilian and military justice systems. With the Obama administration planning to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators at Guantanamo--and vindicate the legal experiment the Bush administration could barely get off the ground--"The Terror Courts" could not be more timely.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are indelibly etched into our cultural memory. This is the story of how the legal ramifications of that day brought two presidents, Congress, and the Supreme Court into repeated confrontation over the incarceration of hundreds of suspected terrorists and “enemy combatants” at the US naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba. Could these prisoners (including an American citizen) be held indefinitely without due process of law? Did they have the right to seek their release by habeas corpus in US courts? Could they be tried in a makeshift military judicial system? With Guantánamo well into its second decade, these questions have challenged the three branches of government, each contending with the others, and each invoking the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as its checks and balances. In The 9/11 Terror Cases, Allan A. Ryan leads students and general readers through the pertinent cases: Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, both decided by the Supreme Court in 2004; Hamdan v. Bush, decided in 2006; and Boumediene v. Bush, in 2008. An eloquent writer and an expert in military law and constitutional litigation, Ryan is an adept guide through the nuanced complexities of these cases, which rejected the sweeping powers asserted by President Bush and Congress, and upheld the rule of law, even for enemy combatants. In doing so, as we see clearly in Ryan's deft account, the Supreme Court's rulings speak directly to the extent and nature of presidential and congressional prerogative, and to the critical separation and balance of powers in the governing of the United States.

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.

A former Marine judge advocate and legal counsel to General Colin Powell, James Terry explores the genesis of the United States approach to terror violence and the legal foundation for the nation’s response to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Terry first reviews the entire spectrum of legal issues that arise before offering creative and practical legal and political solutions to counter terrorist activities. The author examines the development of rules of engagement and their application in the terrorist environment while differentiating the law of self-defense in this environment from more traditional conflicts. He also addresses the role of interrogation, and the line between harsh interrogation and torture, and the jurisdictional claims that arise. This volume examines a large number of topics related to the struggle and in a remarkably concise exploration, makes them understandable to experts in international law as well as those who do not have a strong background in the field. This text provides a serious but concise review of the legal issues in 20 interrelated chapters. All constitutional law scholars and political scientists will greatly benefit from reading this book. No other text offers such a comprehensive or detailed review of the issues arising from the war on terror.

Terrorism has become one of the major threats facing both states and the international community, in particular after the terrorist attacks in the United States, Madrid and London, which revealed a whole new scale and dimension of the phenomenon. An effective response is absolutely necessary; this response, however, cannot undermine democracy, human rights, the rule of law or the supreme values inherent to these principles.There is no universally agreed definition of "terrorism", nor is there an international Jurisdiction before which the perpetrators of terrorist crimes can be brought to account. The European Court of Human Rights is the first international Jurisdiction to deal with such a phenomenon. For many decades and through more than four hundred cases, it has elaborated a clear, integrated and articulated body of case law on responses to terrorism from a human rights and rule of law perspective. Thus, this is a handbook on counter-terrorism with a special focus on due respect for human rights and rule of law.This book compiles the doctrine laid down by the European Court of Human Rights in this field with a view to facilitating the task of adjudicators, legal officers, lawyers, international IGOs, NGOs, policy makers, researchers, victims and all those committed to fighting this scourge. The book presents a careful analysis of this body of case law and the general principles applicable to the fight against terrorism resulting from each particular case. It also includes a compendium of the main cases dealt with by the Strasbourg Court in this field and will prove to be a most useful guiding tool in the sensitive area of counter-terrorism and human rights.

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

Terrorism has become an everyday reality in most contemporary societies. In a context of heightened fear can juries be trusted to remain impartial when confronted by defendants charged with terrorism? Do they scrutinize prosecution cases carefully, or does emotion trump reason once the spectre of terrorism is invoked? This book examines these questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The authors look at the how jurors in terrorism trials are likely to respond to gruesome evidence, including beheading videos. The 'CSI effect' is examined as a possible response to forensic evidence, and jurors with different learning preferences are compared. Virtual interactive environments, built like computer games, may be created to provide animated reconstructions of the prosecution or defence case. This book reports on how to create such presentations, culminating in the analysis of a live simulated trial using interactive visual displays followed by jury deliberations. divThe team of international, transdisciplinary experts draw conclusions of global legal and political significance, and contribute to the growing scholarship on comparative counter-terrorism law. The book will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners of law, criminal justice, forensic science and psychology.