Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism

Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism. By Bruce Ackerman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. 240 pp.

In the latest of a string of thoughtful and challenging public-policy proposals, Bruce Ackerman turns his attention to the dilemma of protecting civil liberties and the integrity of U.S. governance in light of the horrors of modern terrorism. Specifically, Ackerman fears normalizing states of emergency and what he sees as the preconditions for oppressive legislation and executive authority. The normalization of emergency is advanced when leading politicians conflate threats to the sovereign integrity of a nation and its continued existence with the threats to the physical well-being of the citizens. Ackerman argues persuasively that the latter form of threats does not truly jeopardize the U.S. political system. In effect, "war on terror" rhetoric is both misplaced and dangerous: it overestimates what is at stake and conflates the distinctive problem of existential threats with the physical threats posed by terrorism.

To move away from the wartime rhetoric and policy, Ackerman proposes to create an emergency constitution. This constitution would be triggered by catastrophic terrorist attacks, although Ackerman is intentionally vague as to what constitutes such an event. Importantly, the emergency constitution is not a formal constitution, so it does not require Article V amendment. Rather, Ackerman details a British-style constitution consisting of a series of emergency provisions that enable...