A decade after 9/11, the international field of counter-terrorism is now thick with law. But that does not mean that the law is coherent or legitimate. The birth of new rules, institutions and processes can be anarchic. New norms overlay older, pre-existing legal forms and regimes, generating...

This paper focuses on the growing pressure to automatically exclude suspected terrorists from refugee status since the late 1990s including exclusion based on mere membership of terrorist organizations. As the first part of this paper shows, such pressure has emanated from the UN General...

There has been considerable ambivalence in the response of the international community and different national governments towards the problem of how to respond to individual terrorist acts and sustained campaigns of terrorist violence. Responses vacillate between a desire to punish and deter...

While most terrorism remains localised, aspects of some transnational terrorism and counter-terrorism have been simultaneously enabled and constrained by globalisation. This paper addresses both the material, causative and legal dynamics of globalisation in relation to terrorism and...

In the absence of a bill of rights in Australia with which to evaluate and challenge sophisticated rights-based arguments for evaluating anti-terrorism laws, those faced with arguably excessive laws are left with little upon which to hang their challenges. In the High Court case of Thomas vs....

This paper first considers the policy reasons for why the international community should define terrorism, focusing on arguments that terrorism: (a) seriously violates human rights; (b) jeopardizes the State, deliberative politics and the constitutional order which sustains rights; (c) is...

Controversy has erupted in many jurisdictions about the inclusion of a motive element in the criminal law definition of terrorism, in particular whether reference to a political, religious or ideological purpose or cause unjustifiably interferes in freedom of expression and freedom of religion,...

This article assesses Australia’s approach to the development and implementation of international law addressing transnational and domestic terrorism. It first considers Australia’s engagement with treaties dealing with terrorism since the 1960s to the present, and earlier efforts by the...

The surprising Decision by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2011 that transnational terrorism in peacetime is a customary international law crime sparked controversy. Until then there was a widespread belief that there existed neither an agreed definition nor an international crime of...