Other People's Patriot Acts: Europe's Response to September 11

Abstract

After September 11, many countries changed their laws to make it easier to fight terrorism. They did so in part because the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1373 under its Chapter VII powers. The resolution required all Members of the United Nations to criminalize terrorism, to prevent their territory from being used to plan or promote terrorism, to crack down on terrorism financing, to tighten up immigration and asylum procedures and to share information about terrorists and terrorist threats with other states. This article examines what happened to the Security Council mandate when it got to Europe by first tracing the framework that the European Union developed to respond to the Security Council mandate and then by exploring the very different legal reactions of the UK and Germany within this common framework. Britain enacted and encouraged extreme measures to meet the terrorist threat while Germany complied with the Security Council within the framework of its established constitutional norms.