Secret trials for terrorists- about time
A “supposedly liberal-leaning jurist” who understands?!?!?! I didn’t think it was possible, but Judge Richard Posner may prove me wrong with his support of secret trials for terrorists and tougher (i.e. less gutlessley liberal) methods of survalance.
“We should think of surveillance as preventative, not punitive,” Posner said. And he’s right. If you’re doing nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to fear- except, of course, what the terrorits are doing in your city.
Grasping the situation in a way few others do, Posner points out that the US is “a law-saturated society where even non-lawyers tend to think of problems in terms of legal categories.”
“Criminal justice and war,” he contends, “are the two responses we have to terrorism. Each comes with its own legal institutions and doctrines and regimes but the struggle against international terrorism doesn’t fit either very well.”
So we have to think outside the legal box on the criminal justice side and be prepared for a long, hard sturggle on the war side. I’m glad someone “supposedly” on the left has the brains to see it and the guts to say it.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Saw your post on the “Hot off the Press” scroll and clicked through, to marvel at the short-sightedness of your comment “If you are doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear.” Secret trials lead to other secret law enforcement measures created to “protect” citizens from outsiders. And history is littered with dark eras where those secret measures are always, always turned against citizens. You see people who point that out as “gutless” … I, respectfully, disagree.