The Logic of Suspending Civil Liberties

Abstract

With these words, the U.K. government’s response to the events of September 11, 2001 was declared unlawful by one of Britain’s most eminent judicial figures, Lord Hoffmann. The government’s contention was simple—that the detention, without charge or trial, of a small number of foreign suspects was a necessary and proportionate response to the threat posed by a nihilistic organization, with which these individuals were intimately associated. The Law Lords, Britain’s most senior judicial authorities, however, held otherwise.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Benjamin Franklin

This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation [Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community…. [T]he real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.¹