Abstract
There is an emergent interest by criminologists in theorising problems that arise when states breach conventional legal norms. This article considers the criminalisation of ‘whistleblowing’ by Manning, Assange and Snowden that revealed illegal actions by the state and major breaches of US and western security intelligence operations. The article asks what such developments mean for the conceptual and normative status of politics and crime constituted in the western liberal frame? It is about criminologists who rely on that paradigm and the need to counter neo-conservative agendas. The article analyzes liberal constitutional democracies with an emphasis on the US. It draws on the work of German theorists Schmitt and Benjamin who stand outside the liberal tradition to highlight how modern states frequently suspends the rule of law and relies on their own sovereign power to declare ‘states of emergency’ to render their own criminal conduct lawful.
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Notes
For weblink to the apache attack video see: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military.
For material on material on the torture allegations see Amnesty International http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/security-and-human-rights/guantanamo.
See statewatch. http://www.statewatch.org/eu-usa-data-surveillance.htm.
See privacy International—https://www.privacyinternational.org/resources/reports.
Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (to which the US is a party) a nation can use force legally if it is acting in self defence (Article 512) or it has been allowed to act by a UN Security Council Resolution (Article 42).
Here legal positivism is contrasted with the natural law tradition, proponents of the later argue that to be lawful the law needs to draw on specified normative ethical principles. Fuller (1958) eg., identified eight juristic norms (a law has to be published widely before the activity it renders unlawful can become so). Finnis explained this by reference to human goods (1980).
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Bessant, J. Criminalizing the Political in a Digital Age. Crit Crim 23, 329–348 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-014-9261-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-014-9261-4