Media Releases

The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism by Prof. Kent Roach available Sept. 1 by Cambridge University Press

August 30, 2011

TORONTO, ON — Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to law pro­fes­sor Kent Roach takes a hard-hit­ting look at the fail­ures of glob­al anti-ter­ror­ism poli­cies over the last 10 years in his lat­est book The 9/11 Effect: Com­par­a­tive Counter-Ter­ror­ism, to be released Sept. 1, 2011 by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press in New York.

In the fol­low up to his pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished book, Sep­tem­ber 11: Con­se­quences for Cana­da, and as the world remem­bers on the upcom­ing 10th anniver­sary of the dev­as­tat­ing attacks in the US, Roach scru­ti­nizes the far-reach­ing impact of Res­o­lu­tion 1373, passed by the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil short­ly after 9/11, which urged coun­tries to define ter­ror­ism and the finan­cial sup­port of ter­ror­ism as seri­ous crimes. Roach specif­i­cal­ly exam­ines the respons­es by the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed King­dom, Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Egypt, Syr­ia, Israel, Sin­ga­pore and Indone­sia, and his book includes a look at anti-ter­ror­ism pol­i­cy around the world, the rule of law, and democ­ra­cy over the past decade.

Key con­clu­sions in The 9/11 Effect:

  1. A changed bal­ance between lib­er­ty and secu­ri­ty with the US, UK and Cana­da rely­ing more on mil­i­tary and admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion on the basis of secret evi­dence and pros­e­cu­tions of speech asso­ci­at­ed with terrorism—practices before 9/11 that were large­ly reserved for coun­tries such as Egypt, Syr­ia and Israel. These less restrained alter­na­tives to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions have often failed to attain legit­i­ma­cy.
  2. Fail­ure of the Unit­ed Nations to pro­vide sound glob­al lead­er­ship since 9/11, includ­ing the con­tin­ued inabil­i­ty to reach agree­ment on a def­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror­ism and the use of secret evi­dence for ter­ror­ist black­list­ing.
  3. Amer­i­can “excep­tion­al­ism” in the form of extra-legalism—the use of dubi­ous claims of legal­i­ty (i.e. the tor­ture memos)—to sup­port ille­gal con­duct, com­bined with com­par­a­tive leg­isla­tive restraint, with the Patri­ot Act being more restrained in many ways than com­pa­ra­ble British, Aus­tralian or Cana­di­an leg­is­la­tion.
  4. Fail­ure of west­ern nations to engage in reha­bil­i­ta­tion of ter­ror­ists, a tech­nique used with suc­cess in Sin­ga­pore.
  5. Fun­da­men­tal account­abil­i­ty gaps domes­ti­cal­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly, as review mech­a­nisms have not kept pace with inten­si­fied whole of gov­ern­ment respons­es to the pre­ven­tion of ter­ror­ism.

The 9/11 Effect high­lights the dis­cov­ery of best prac­tices in shap­ing glob­al anti-ter­ror­ism poli­cies, and con­tem­plates how 9/11 has influ­enced inter­na­tion­al law. The author of 11 books, Prof. Roach is a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Task Force on Ter­ror­ism, Democ­ra­cy and the Law. He has served with the Com­mis­sion of Inquiries into Maher Arar and the Bomb­ing of Air India Flight 182. Roach holds the Prichard-Wil­son Chair in Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at the Fac­ul­ty of Law. He was elect­ed a Fel­low of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Cana­da in 2002.

For review copies of The 9/11 Effect con­tact: Nicole Vil­leneuve, Pub­li­cist (212) 337‑6567, nvilleneuve@cambridge.org

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Prof. Kent Roach
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Fac­ul­ty of Law
Kent.roach@utoronto.ca
Bio: http://uoft.me/kentroach
The 9/11 Effect: http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item6453524/?site_locale=en_US

Lucian­na Cic­co­ciop­po
Direc­tor, Exter­nal Rela­tions
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Fac­ul­ty of Law
416–946-0334
Lucianna.ciccocioppo@utoronto.ca