Human Rights Violations After 9/11 and the Role of Constitutional Constraints
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The Graduate Forum and the Harvard European Law Association
have the pleasure to invite you to a talk on
“Human Rights Violations After 9/11 and the Role of
Constitutional Constraints“
After 9/11, the United States and its allies took measures to protect their citizens from future terrorist attacks. While these measures aim to increase security, they have often been criticized for violating human rights. But violating rights is difficult in a constitutional democracy with separated powers and checks and balances. Veto players in the legislative branch (majoritarian checks) may veto rights violations that go against the wishes of the majority of people. And judicial review by an independent court (counter-majoritarian checks) may result in the invalidation of counter-terrorism measures that are in violation of a country’s pre-commitments to human rights, regardless of the wishes of the majority. We use difference-in-difference estimation for 152 countries between 1978 and 2006 to test whether 9/11 has led to an increase in rights violations in US ally countries and whether this effect depends on a country’s checks and balances. We find that 9/11 has led to a systematic increase in human rights violations in US ally countries. This effect was significantly smaller in countries with independent judicial review, but did not depend on the presence of veto players in the legislative branch.
