The Guantánamo Bay Juridical Field

Abstract

The previous chapters have analyzed how recurrent identifiable features of counterterrorism may become permanent within a legal system. The durability of emergency laws leads to their normalization over time. One possibility is that if emergency laws become present in everyday legal practice and reshape the constitutive rules of practice (such as forum, jurisdiction, and provision of legal representation) the effects of these laws on rights may no longer inspire opposition. In a more poetic depiction, English-born Australian writer Ada Cambridge writes of this process as one in which the rebel spirits are chastised by justice. A second possibility is that opposition may still be there but the kind of opposition (who opposes, for what reasons, and how) may develop new dimensions. A third possibility also exists; lawyers may be aware of the creeping normalization and mobilize against the normalization in a substantive manner, thereby reversing some of the measures that have been adopted.