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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Perilous Dialogue, Laura K. Donohue Apr 2009

The Perilous Dialogue, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The master metaphor in the national security dialogue is, indeed, “security or freedom”. It dominates the counterterrorist discourse both in the United States and abroad. Transcripts from debates in Ireland’s Dáil Éireann, Turkey’s Büyük Millet Meclisi, and Australia’s Parliament are filled with reference to the need to weigh the value of liberty against the threat posed by terrorism. Perhaps nowhere is this more pronounced than in the United Kingdom, where, for decades, counterterrorist debates have turned on this framing. Owing in part, though, to different constitutional structures, what “security or freedom” means in America differs from what it means in …


Out Of The Shadows: Preventive Detention, Suspected Terrorists, And War, David Cole Jan 2009

Out Of The Shadows: Preventive Detention, Suspected Terrorists, And War, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines the appropriate and inappropriate role of "preventive detention" in responding to terrorist threats. It offers a constitutional jurisprudence of preventive detention, maintaining that absent a showing that dangerous behaviour cannot be addressed through criminal prosecution, preventive detention is unconstitutional. But criminal prosecution is not always a realistic option, and in those circumstances, preventive detention, carefully circumscribed and meticulously safeguarded by procedural protections, may be permissible. Familiar examples of accepted preventive detention regimes include civil commitment of dangerous persons who because of a mental disability cannot be held criminally responsible, and detention of enemy soldiers in a traditional …