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Detention is among the most invasive and potent exercises of government power over an individual. Investigative detention — the pre-charge detention of a suspect for the purpose of obtaining evidence for use at a subsequent criminal prosecution. This differs from other kinds of detention that are relevant to counterterrorism operations (such as battlefield detention under the law of armed conflict) in that it is a detention power that exists within the ordinary, domestic criminal law frameworks of various jurisdictions. This paper explores the international and domestic legal developments related to investigative detention as it is carried out in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. As part of this discussion, I explain the evolving threat environment that features investigative detention. This paper discusses the way in which each legal regime — based on its respective legal tradition and history — shapes the way in which investigative detention is exercised. Relatedly, this paper also highlights the way in which international law has served as a vector for change and convergence among these otherwise divergent legal systems — creating a rough similitude in the evolving approaches of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to the problems associated with the investigative detention of terrorist suspects.

David Santillana was a cosmopolitan jurist and expert on Islamic law who was born in Ottoman Tunisia in 1855. He had a long, multifaceted career as a scholar and legal practitioner in North Africa and Europe, but is best known for his scholarship on the Maliki school of Islamic law and for his central role in the creation of the Tunisian Code of Obligations and Contracts—the first successful modern synthesis of Islamic law and continental civil law. This codification, in turn, served as inspiration for the civil codes of Morocco and Mauritania.

This article briefly reviews a few aspects of the 2018 National Strategy for Counterterrorism (NSCT) that are worthy of examination. These include its wider scope, which encompasses domestic terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism; its focus on prevention efforts with a consideration of future threats; and the efficacy of its approach to pursuing and dismantling terrorist groups, most notably the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In an era of fragile states and rising transnational violence, international law struggles to provide mechanisms that counter global instability. Ungoverned spaces pose particularly vexing problems for international law, which remains conceptually tethered to the territorial state and mainly relies upon states and their institutions for enforcement. This paper examines the manner in which international law engages with non-state armed groups—such as terrorist organizations—that use ungoverned spaces as safe havens and bases of operation. This analysis permits an evaluation of what international law can effectively accomplish in such a context, and highlights areas of evolution in the international legal framework that permit more effective responses. In turn, this evaluation recommends policymakers adopt more holistic approaches vis-a-vis ungoverned spaces, and invites a reconsideration of assumptions that may no longer be viable given the changing international legal backdrop, most notably assumptions about what is possible through military intervention and whether international courts could be useful partners in the global struggle against terrorism.

The tension between the desires of the potentate and the 'immutable' nature of law is one that resonates in the human psyche because of the drama inherent in such a struggle. This theme gained in importance after the emergence of the modern state, which separated the notion of political authority from divine power and fundamentally altered the concept of the sovereign. This paper explores the Pearl Poet's 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', and Bolt's 'A Man for All Seasons' - different plays authored in different times which, nonetheless, contain common elements such as the interplay between the power of kings and a higher legal authority that seeks to bind them. It is in that struggle that both plays derive a common source of drama, but articulate very different views of the relationship between power and law.