Both editors of this volume—Genevieve Lennon, Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde School of Law, and Clive Walker, Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Leeds School of Law—are well-known scholars of the law and policy of counter-terrorism. The focus of the book under review is national counter-terrorism law, although Chapters 2, 4, 5, 16, 24, and 27 consider international dimensions of the subject.
The book’s title does not fully reflect the comprehensiveness of its content. There are some chapters that go beyond purely legal analysis to shed light on the complexity of relationships between politics and law, security, and justice. Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando show the potential for misuse by terrorists of incapacitating chemical agent weapons and explain the relationship between the legalization of terrorism and international arms control. Steven Greer analyzes the concept of the “Securitised Muslim Community”. He points to the limits of law in terms of suspicion falling on the Muslim community and Islam itself, and suggests that more attention needs to be paid to other sociological aspects of counter-terrorism. Maura Conway and Clive Walker distinguish between negative and positive measures of counter-terrorism in cyberspace, portraying the difficulty and idiosyncrasy of legalizing this specific field of counter-terrorism policy.
This book is an indispensable adjunct to existing reference texts on law and terrorism.
