* Forthcoming Scholarship
“The Signaling Function of Religious Speech in Domestic Counterterrorism”
Texas Law Review, forthcoming
Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago Law School)
Email: huq
A wave of attempted domestic terrorism attacks in 2009 and 2010 has sharpened attention to the threat of domestic-source terrorism inspired or directed by al Qaeda. Seeking to preempt that terror, governments face an information problem. They must separate signals of terrorism risk from potentially overwhelming background noise and persuade juries or fact finders that those signals warrant coercive action. Selection of accurate signals of terrorism danger in the information-poor circumstances of domestic counterterrorism is arguably a central challenge today for law enforcement tasked with preventing further terrorist attacks. To an underappreciated extent, governments have used religious speech as a proxy for terrorism risk in order to resolve this signaling problem. This Article analyzes the legal and policy significance of state reliance upon religious speech as a predictor of terrorism risk. Constitutional doctrine under the Religion Clauses does recognize interests implicated by the signaling function of religious speech. Yet analysis suggests that such doctrinal protection is fragile. Symptomatic of a wider inflexibility of pre-9/11 constitutional doctrine, this doctrinal protection shows little capacity for responsive change. The absence of constitutional barriers, however, does not mean government should persist in relying on religious speech as a signal. Rather, analysis of counterterrorism policy concerns suggests another path. Institutional considerations and an emerging social science literature on terrorism suggest that religious speech is ill suited to the signaling role it now plays. Instead, empirical social science on terrorism points to the epistemic superiority of a different signal: the close associations of a terrorism suspect. The Article concludes by examining the constitutionality of such a signal and elaborating ways that insight from the new social science of terrorism can be realized without compromising important individual interests.
“Mechanisms for Eliciting Cooperation in Counter-Terrorism Policing: Evidence from the United Kingdom”
Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago Law School)
Tom Tyler (NYU – Department of Psychology)
Stephen Schulhofer (NYU) – School of Law)
Email: huq
This study examines the effects of counterterrorism policing tactics on public cooperation amongst Muslim communities in London, U.K. It tests a procedural justice model developed in the context of studying crime control in the United States. The study reports results of a random-sample survey of 300 closed and fixed response telephone interviews conducted in Greater London’s Muslim community in February and March 2010. It tests predictors of cooperation with police acting against terrorism. Specifically, the study provides a quantitative analysis of how perceptions of police efficacy, greater terrorism threat, and the choice of policing tactics predict the willingness to cooperate voluntarily in law enforcement efforts against terrorism. Cooperation is defined to have two elements: a general receptivity toward helping the police in anti-terror work, and a specific willingness to alert police upon becoming aware of a terror-related risk in a community. We find that procedural justice concerns prove better predictors for both measures of cooperation in counter-terrorism policing among British Muslims. Unlike previous studies of policing in the United States, however, we find no correlation between judgments about the legitimacy of police and cooperation. Rather procedural justice judgments influence cooperation directly.
Psychology, Public Policy & Law, Forthcoming
Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago Law School)
Tom Tyler (NYU – Department of Psychology)
Stephen Schulhofer (NYU) – School of Law)
Email: huq
This study addresses the extension of the “procedural justice” model for understanding public cooperation with law enforcement to new policing contexts and new minority populations. The study draws on four recent surveys of public reactions to policing against crime or against terrorism across different populations to examine whether the changing purpose of policing, or changes in the communities targeted for heightened policing have an effect on how cooperative behaviors are elicited. This paper presents evidence that procedural justice mechanisms are robust across a variety of contexts and populations in the United States. Three issues in particular are addressed. First, whether the procedural justice model applies across policing functions and policed populations. Second, whether the perception that another group is the target of disproportionate policing efforts has any effect on the cooperation behavior of a non-targeted population. And third, whether people attend to different aspects of policing behavior if their community is targeted for heightened policing attention.
“The Law: John Yoo and the Republic”
Lou Fisher (The Constitution Project)
41 Political Science Quarterly 177 (2011)
In his articles, books, and legal memoranda for the U.S. Department of Justice, John Yoo is well known for favoring broad and even exclusive presidential power in the field of national security. Less understood is his dependence on the British model and the prerogatives it extended to the king over external affairs. In his writings, Yoo devotes little attention to the framers’ rejection of British executive prerogatives. Even less does he acknowledge their commitment to a republic, a form of government in which sovereign power is vested not in an executive but in the people.