The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism by Kent Roach (review)

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 spawned a veritable academic industry of analysis and commentary devoted to the examination and critique of the efforts made by governments around the world to counter further attack. The succeeding decade of hyper-legislation, ‘extra-legal’ measures, and rapid policy development has only fuelled this industry. It has also driven the introduction of new courses and entire degree programs, research projects, and institutional centres of security and counter-terrorism. While the law-review literature is immense and some excellent edited volumes have been published,¹ comprehensive, synoptic legal texts have been slow to appear. So The 9/11 Effect is a particularly welcome addition to the literature.

The scope and ambition of this book is daunting – its scale is magisterial, its attention to detail and the depth of its analysis are truly impressive. Roach begins by analysing the response of the United Nations to 9/11 and the demands made by UN Security Council Resolutions on national legislatures. By starting with the exigencies imposed by the UN Resolutions, Roach persuasively demonstrates that national policies developed in the context of international obligations. He shows that the UN emphasis on tackling the financing of terrorism – a dubious strategy as it turned out, given the relatively low cost of the 9/11 attacks – skewed subsequent legislative and policy development. Roach is also critical of the UN’s emphasis on immigration law as a means of countering terrorism because it allowed the developed world to return potential terrorists to unstable countries with poor human rights records – a decidedly questionable tactic given the UN’s responsibility to develop an effective global counter-terrorism strategy.

Roach goes on to examine the responses of five countries – Egypt, Syria, Israel, Singapore, and Indonesia – by way of comparison with the responses of more established democracies – the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. This ambitious structure provides for illuminating comparative analysis of some varied political and legal regimes and enables Roach to explore the commonalities and differences between otherwise like liberal democracies. His method is to combine careful comparison of legal doctrine with contextual analysis of the ‘historical, political, and organizational factors that have affected the development of antiterrorism laws and policies’ (5). The result is a nuanced account of the strategies adopted by countries with very different historical experiences of terrorism and differing human rights records. It is difficult to do justice to the detailed examination of legislative and policy developments that Roach has undertaken and the rich picture of developments his work portrays.

The larger picture painted by Roach is, most worryingly, one of global convergence between the counter-terrorism policies of established democracies and of more authoritarian, less rights-regarding regimes. Practices such as administrative detention and use of secret evidence, once criticized in countries like Singapore and Israel, and the use of military courts and military detention, common in Egypt and Indonesia, have become more accepted, and have even been adopted, by Western democracies. A second form of convergence arises in the readiness of former colonial countries, most notably Australia, to follow the United Kingdom’s example of engaging in frenetic legislative activity or, as Roach terms it, ‘hyper-legislation’ to enact similar laws and adopt analogous counter-terrorist measures. The strength of British influence and the obvious parallels between developments in Britain and elsewhere is a recurrent theme throughout the book, and Roach persuasively demonstrates that several countries followed the British example closely. It is arguable, however, that the case for British influence derives as much from the choice of jurisdictions – chiefly former colonies and common law countries – as from Britain’s standing in the world of counter-terrorism. The claims for British influence would be much less strong had continental European nations, for example, been selected for scrutiny.

At odds with this convergence thesis, Roach reveals significant instances of divergence: in the scope and nature of the legislation, the role of the courts, and the development of extra-legal measures and policies. Arguably, the most significant...