Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:07:48.309Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interest-Balancing vs. Fiduciary Duty: Two Models for National Security Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Evan Fox-Decent  and
Evan J. Criddle

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The metaphor of the balance has long dominated national security law and policy. As Richard Posner has explained, one side of the balance “contains individual rights, the other community safety, with the balance needing and receiving readjustment from time to time as the weights of the respective interests change. The safer we feel, the more weight we place on the interest in personal liberty; the more endangered we feel, the more weight we place on the interest in safety, while recognizing the interdependence of the two interests.” While policymakers have debated the relative weight states should give to civil liberty concerns and public security concerns in various contexts, few question the general balance metaphor that structures these debates. By all accounts, interest balancing has provided the primary model for making national security law and policy worldwide since September 11, 2001.

Type
Articles
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 5: The Ruptures in International Law , May 2012 , pp. 542 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Richard A. Posner, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency 148 (2006).Google Scholar

2 See e.g., id. at 83 (alleging that “almost everyone …. accepts the necessity of resorting to [torture] in extreme situations”).Google Scholar

3 See id. at 77–87; Posner, Eric A. & Vermeule, Adrian, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts 183–215 (2007).Google Scholar

4 See Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (George Schwab trans. 2005) (rev'd ed. 1934).Google Scholar

5 See Fox-Decent, Evan & Criddle, Evan, The Fiduciary Constitution of Human Rights, 15 Legal Theory 301 (2010) [hereinafter “Fox-Decent & Criddle, Fiduciary Constitution“]; Evan Criddle & Evan Fox-Decent, A Fiduciary Theory of Jus Cogens, 34 Yale Journal of International Law (Yale J. Int'l L.) 331 (2009) [hereinafter “Criddle & Fox-Decent, Jus Cogens“].Google Scholar

6 See Fox-Decent & Criddle, Fiduciary Constitution, supra note 5 at 325.Google Scholar

7 See Criddle & Fox-Decent, Jus Cogens, supra note 5 at 356 & 365–70.Google Scholar

8 See Criddle, Evan & Fox-Decent, Evan, Human Rights, Emergencies, and the Rule of Law 34 Hum. Rts. Q. 39 (2012).Google Scholar

9 Bundesverfassungsgericht [BVerfG - Federal Constitutional Court], Case No. 1 BvR 357/05, Feb. 15, 2006, 115 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [BVerfGE] 118 (GER.), available at: http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20060215_1bvr035705.html, last accessed: April 24, 2012, (English translation of press release available at: http://www.bverfg.de/en/press/bvg06-011en.html, last accessed: April 24, 2012) [hereinafter “Aviation Security“].Google Scholar

10 Case of Gäfgen v. Germany, App No. 22978/05, [2010] Eur. Ct. HR 759 (1 June 2010), available at: http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentld=868977&portal=hbkm&source=externalbydocnumber&table=F69A27FD8FB86142BF01C1166DEA398649 (last accessed: 24 April 2012) [hereinafter “Gäfgen v. Germany“].Google Scholar

11 Waldron, Jeremy, Security and Liberty: The Image of Balance, 11 Journal of Political Philosophy (J. Pol. Phil.) 191, 192 (2003). Waldron criticizes the simple formula ‘less liberty equals more security,’ claiming that this abstract balancing model overlooks important nuances that must be taken into account in the justification of any restriction on civil liberties. For instance, the simple balancing model disregards the fact that diminutions in liberty tend to fall disproportionately on minorities, and that increasing state power also increases the risk of its abuse.; see also Id. at 200–06.Google Scholar

12 Id. at 192.Google Scholar

13 Id. Google Scholar

14 Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations of the United States § 702, comments h, k and n.Google Scholar

15 Dershowitz, Alan, Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age 477 (2002).Google Scholar

16 Posner, supra note 1 at 83, 85.Google Scholar

17 See, e.g., Shue, Henry, Torture, 7 Philosophy and Public Affairs (Phil. & Pub. Aff.) 124, 141 (1978).Google Scholar

18 Id. See also Shklar, Judith, The Liberalism of Fear, in Liberalism and the Moral Life 26–27 (Nancy L. Rosenblum, ed. 1989); Waldron, supra note 11 at 207.Google Scholar

19 To this end, Dershowitz has proposed a warrant regime for coercive interrogation, see Dershowitz, Alan, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge 158-59 (2002), while Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule have advocated a series of reforms for administrative oversight to address the potential for abuse in coercive interrogation; see Posner & Vermeule, supra note 3, at 209–13.Google Scholar

20 In the age of weapons of mass destruction, Michael Dorf observes, “people are a little nervous about applying that maxim [that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to send one innocent man to jail] where the 10 guilty men who are going to go free could have biological weapons.” Waldron, supra note 11, at 204 (quoting Michael Dorf in Pam Belluck, Hue and Murmur over Curbed Rights, Times, N.Y., Nov. 17, 2001, at B8).Google Scholar

21 Posner & Vermeule, supra note 3, at 38.Google Scholar

22 Id. at 187.Google Scholar

23 id. Google Scholar

24 id. Google Scholar

25 Aviation Security, supra note 9.Google Scholar

26 Felix M#x00FC;ller & Tobias Richter, Report on the Bundesverfassungsgericht's (Federal Constitutional Court) Jurisprudence in 2005–2006, 9 Germ. L.J. 161, 185 (2008), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.org/pdfs/Vol09No02/PDF_Vol_09_No_02_161-194_Developments_Mueller.pdf (last accessed: 24 April 2012).Google Scholar

27 Gesetz zur Neuregelung von Luftsicherheitsgesetz (Aviation Security Act) § 14(1) (BGBI, I) (Jan. 11, 2005).Google Scholar

28 Id. at § 14(3).Google Scholar

29 Aviation Security, supra note 9 at, § 34.Google Scholar

30 Id. at §§ 34–35 (summarizing complainants’ arguments).Google Scholar

31 Id. at § 47.Google Scholar

32 Id. at § 51.Google Scholar

33 Id. at § 121.Google Scholar

34 Id. at § 118.Google Scholar

35 Id. at § 122.Google Scholar

36 Id. at § 119 (internal citations omitted).Google Scholar

37 Id. at § 122. The court held that the military's use of lethal force against a renegade aircraft would not violate the right to life, if the plane did not contain any innocent passengers or crew members. Id. at § 142.Google Scholar

38 Id. at §130.Google Scholar

39 The court noted secondarily that even under a consequentialist theory of the right to life, it was questionable whether the Aviation Security Act could survive constitutional review, because there will always be uncertainty surrounding “how long people who are on board a plane which has been converted into an assault weapon will live and whether there is still a chance of rescuing them.” Id. at § 131.Google Scholar

40 Aufruf zum Verfassungsbruch? (Call for violation of the constitution?), Frankfurter Allgemaine (Sept. 17, 2007), available at: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/kritik-an-jung-und-schaeuble-aufruf-zum-verfassungsbruch-1463080.html (last accessed: 24 April 2012).Google Scholar

41 Gafgen v. Germany, supra note 10, at §§ 10–22, 47, 94–100.Google Scholar

42 Id. at § 94.Google Scholar

43 Id. at § 15.Google Scholar

44 In Germany there is no hard-edged doctrine analogous to the U.S. exclusionary rule.Google Scholar

45 Id. at § 32.Google Scholar

46 Id. at §34.Google Scholar

47 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, arts. 3 & 4, Nov. 4, 1950, 213 U.N.T.S. 221 [hereinafter “Convention”].Google Scholar

48 Gäfgen v. Germany, supra note 10, at § 87 (citing, inter alia, Selmouni v. France [GC], no. 25803/94, § 95, ECHR 1999-V; Labita v. Italy ([GC], no. 26772/95, § 119, ECHR 2000-IV; Chahal v. the United Kingdom, 15 November 1996, § 79, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-V).Google Scholar

49 Id. at §§ 106–07.Google Scholar

50 Id. at § 107 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

51 Id. at §§ 91, 108.Google Scholar

52 Id. at §91. Gäfgen alleged that he had been assaulted and subject to additional threats while he was interrogated. The government denied these allegations, and explained Gäfgen's evidence in support of them. In light of these explanations and the domestic courts’ failure to find for Gäfgen on these issues, the ECHR held that Gäfgen had not met the burden of showing that he was subject to further abuses. Id. at §§ 96–98.Google Scholar

53 Article 34 provides that “The Court may receive applications from any person … claiming to be the victim of a violation by one of the High Contracting Parties of the rights set forth in the Convention or the Protocols thereto.”Google Scholar

54 Gäfgen v. Germany, supra note 10, §§ 47–48 (the ECHR's characterization of the Regional Court's holding).Google Scholar

55 Gäfgen v. Germany, supra note 10, at §§ 49–50.Google Scholar

56 Gäfgen v. Germany, supra at note 10, at §§ 124–25.Google Scholar

57 Gäfgen v. Germany, supra note 10, at §§ 1-13 (Rozakis, Tulkens, Jebens, Ziemele, Bianku, and Power, JJ., dissenting).Google Scholar

58 See e.g., Fox-Decent & Criddle, Fiduciary Constitution, supra note 5, at 309–25.Google Scholar

59 See Criddle & Fox-Decent, supra note 8.Google Scholar

60 Gäfgen v. Germany, supra note 10, at § 107.Google Scholar