Kim Scheppele
Professor
of Law and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
"Other People's PATRIOT Acts:
Europe's Response to 9/11"
Tuesday, 9 March 2004
12:00 p.m.
7200 Law (Lubar Commons)
Sponsored
by
The
European Union
Center
and
The Institute for
Legal Studies (ILS)
Though the 9/11 attacks occurred in the U.S., much of Europe reacted strongly
as if it were also under attack. Britain and Germany passed new counter-terrorism
laws. The EU speeded up its creation of the common European arrest warrant,
rushed EUROJUST into existence and promoted a common criminal framework
for dealing with terrorism across the EU member states. The Council of
Europe promulgated an additional protocol for the European Convention
on the Suppression of Terrorism and issued guidelines on human rights
in the fight against terrorism. The response across European countries
and European institutions was strong, but it was not uniform in its content.
In fact, the divergent responses of different elements of "Europe" reveal
broader fault lines in the European idea. This presentation explores why
Europe has not had a unform reaction to 9/11 by connecting these varied
reactions to different ideas about justifiable states of emergency.
Kim Lane Scheppele is the John J. O'Brien Professor of Law and Sociology
at the University of Pennsylvania. She has spent roughly five years out
of the last ten living in either Hungary or Russia, studying the development
of their new constitutional systems under various grants from the National
Science Foundation. Since 9/11, she has been examining reactions to the
attacks in comparative perspective for a book she is writing called Law
in a Time of Emergency. Scheppele is a former codirector of the Program
on Gender and Culture at Central European University, former chair of
the sociology of law section of the American Sociological Association,
former treasurer/trustee/program chair of the Law and Society Association
and an active member of the Law and Courts section of the American Political
Science Association. Next year, she will be a fellow in the Law and Public
Affairs Program at Princeton University.