The war on terror and crusading judges: reestablishing the primacy of the criminal justice system

Since 11 september 2001, countering terrorism has become one of the biggest priorities of the international community, the common trend among different jurisdictions being the adoption of fierce and authoritarian measures to prevent and suppress the terrorist threat in the name of a widespread call for further security. The current changes are to be seen in the broader picture of developments in criminal justice in western europe in recent years to address an allegedly mounting insecurity in the need to be tough on crime: the current normalization of extraordinary means and, in particular, the emergence of an “us and them” approach to criminal justice, which german legal writers call a feindstrafrecht. This authoritarian model of preventive criminal law would deny human rights and legal guarantees (the “citizen’s criminal law”) to those who are seen as sources of extreme danger because of their suspicious behaviour. Some general suggestions are made as to what could and should be done to counter the existing trends and with a view of re-establishing the primacy of the criminal justice system and limit the recourse to exceptional measures to cope with the terrorism threat.keywordscriminal justice systemcriminal prosecutionterrorist threatcommunity treatment orderhome departmentthese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.