It is often asserted that the attacks of September 11 th, 2001 "changed everything." Yet examples of supposedly "new" preventive counterterror policies bear a striking resemblance to lawful criminal justice tactics already long in place. This dissertation examines several notorious post-2001 counterterror tactics in the context of the development of U.S. crime control policy in the late 20th century. I look to post-2001 policies and argue that these policies, to the extent that they altered American law, policy, and practice following the 2001 attacks, were changes of degree, rather than kind. Further, I argue that the U.S. response to the attacks of 2001 was shaped specifically by criminal justice developments occurring over the course of the 1970s through 90s. Far from a brand new response for a brand new threat, U.S. counterterror policy post-2001 came directly from the technologies, practices, and goals of crime control which had been developing since the late 1960s, specifically steadily decreasing checks on executive authority, increasing judicial deference, and correspondingly increasing informalism.;To support this analysis, I look to sources including: legislative history of relevant statutes; over 300 terror prosecutions prior to and after 2001 (including trial transcripts, motions, pleadings, and judicial decisions); and caselaw and legal textbooks prior to and after 2001. This contextual analysis not only shows the consistency of post-2001 policy with pre-2001 criminal justice, it suggests that these criminal justice norms influenced broader U.S. policy, and expands our understanding of how those criminal justice norms were developing in the late 20th century.
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