National Security Law Commons^™

Special Administrative Measures: An Example Of Counterterror Excesses And Their Roots In U.S. Criminal Justice, Francesca Laguardia

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article examines the creation and implementation of pretrial Special Administrative Measures [SAMs], a version of pretrial solitary confinement now used most often to confine terror suspects in the federal criminal justice system. Through an in-depth archival study, this article brings attention to the importance of 20th-century criminal justice trends to the 21st-century response to the threat of terrorism, including an increasingly preventive focus and decreasing judicial checks on executive action. The findings suggest that practices believed to be excessive responses to the threat of terrorism are in fact a natural outgrowth of late modern criminal justice.

Duck-Rabbits And Drones: Legal Indeterminacy In The War On Terror, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the days and weeks immediately following the 9/11 attacks, “the law” offered little to lawyers or policy-makers looking for guidance. Indeed, for many the events of 9/11 became the legal equivalent of a Rorschach test: depending on the observer, the 9/11 attacks were variously construed as criminal acts, acts of war, or something in between, thus fitting into (or triggering) any of several radically different legal regimes.

Divergent interpretations of the law are common, of course. Legal rules often contain an element of ambiguity, and the “facts” to which law must be applied can frequently be construed in multiple …