文档介绍：Humpty Dumpty Rules or the Rule of Law: Legal
Theory and the Adjudication of National Security

DAVID DYZENHAUS*

I know of only one authority which might justify the suggested method of
construction. ‘“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”“The question is,”
said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”“The
question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”…’ After all
this long discussion the question is whether the words ‘If a man has’ can mean ‘If a
man thinks he has.’ I am of the opinion that they cannot, and that the case should be
decided accordingly.
Lord Atkin, dissenting, Liversidge v Anderson, [1942] AC 207 at 245

Introduction

Anti-terrorism legislation is in vogue after the terrible attacks on the United States of
America in September 2001. It is not immediately clear why this should be so, even if there
were a credible case to be made that the countries rushing to be fashionable are under real
and novel threat. Their criminal law already makes any terrorist act a crime (with the
exception perhaps of international money laundering) and a much more plausible reaction
would be to devote more resources, on the international level, to understanding and dealing
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with the political situations in which terrorism is fomented and, on the domestic level, to
rethinking and strengthening security and

Terrorist legislation is not only an inherent threat to civil liberties but, as the dismal history
of the implementation of the legislation shows, of little use in eradicating terrorism. History
teaches us that the crimes of terrorism are best dealt with by using the ordinary law of the
land effectively and that those caught in cast by terrorism statutes are more often
than not the ‘other’ or the ‘alien’– the illegal immigrants, the refugees w