Responding to Terrorism: Definition and Other Actions

‘shifting and contested meanings of ‘terrorism’ over time’ and ‘the peculiar semantic power of the term, beyond its literal signification [the] capacity to stigmatize, … denigrate, and dehumanize those at whom it is directed, including legitimate political opponents. The term is ideologically and politically loaded; pejorative; implies moral, social, and value judgment; and is ‘slippery and much-abused’. In the absence of a definition of terrorism, the struggle over the representation of a violent act is a struggle over its legitimacy. The more confused a concept, the more it lends itself to opportunistic appropriation.

The term … has been erratically employed to describe all manner of evils, such as the nuclear ‘balance of terror’; rape by ‘sex terrorists’; and the Spanish inquisition. It has also been used to describe things that are not evils at all: refugees in Sabra and Shatilla; loggers who caused flooding in Sumatra; and even parliamentary colleagues who sought to release asylum seekers from detention.’

Terrorist acts are all acts intended to cause a state of terror and committed by means liable to create a public danger such as explosive devices, inflammable materials, toxic or corrosive products or microbial agents.

161. The contention that judges should not be creating the power is reinforced when one considers the extent of domestic statutory law and international convention law in the area of international insolvency… In this highly legislated area, I consider that the power which is said to arise in this case is one which should be bestowed on the court by the legislature, and not arrogated to the court of its own motion.

…legislation as a source of law is inseparable from a process of interpretation by the Courts, which in itself amounts to a subordinate source of law. It is impossible to curtail the freedom of judges in analyzing cases and applying general rules in ways not indicated in the rule and not premeditated by the legislators. Thus in the simplest and most emphatic expression of the law-making power of societies, we find that another factor asserts itself by the side of that of deliberate prospective commands, namely, the force of public opinion and of professional opinion as manifested in the action of judges. They are undoubtedly persons in authority, but their voice has a decisive weight in such questions not merely on account of this external authority, by chiefly by reason of the necessities imposed by logic, by moral and by practical considerations.

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

…

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.