Posner & Vermeule: Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts

"Quotidian" Judges vs. Al-Qaeda

Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts. By Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2007. Pp. 3, 307.

In Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, University of Chicago law professors Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule invite those of us worried about the American response to al-Qaeda to consider the proper role of judges. Judges, of course, are not being dispatched to the hills of Pakistan nor are they securing our borders or buildings. But as the executive seeks to implement a range of new policies in the name of protecting us from al-Qaeda, the judicial treatment of these policies shapes the American response.