7/7 and a Scholar's Agenda

Today marks the one-week anniversary of the London bombings (an eternity in the time scale of the blogosphere). I've been reflecting today on how a legal scholar (me, in particular) might respond to seismic events like these.

I am a criminal justice scholar of a particular stripe. I specialize in "mass justice" issues that affect large numbers of suspects and offenders in the systems I know best -- those in the United States. When events like 7/7 or 9/11 come along, I notice that the big issues of the day don't fall directly into my territory. For instance, the PATRIOT Act is terribly interesting, but it is not yet a mass justice issue. So far, the variety of investigative techniques that were authorized under that statute tend to be relevant in only a few specialized cases (although the cases are certainly not limited to terrorism investigations).

Still, compelling world events like these do start to change the landscape in mass justice. For instance, immigration law enforcement now becomes a more integral feature of criminal justice. Immigration violations have become the standard entry point for an underlying terrorism investigation, and this habit of mind is spreading more generally to criminal law enforcement. (For some more extended thoughts on the connection between criminal and immigration enforcement, see this article.) 

Major events like 7/7 and 9/11 also change public priorities, and that shifts the ground beneath all enforcement and prosecution resource allocations. It also changes the dynamics of crime politics. Scholars need to track closely the institutional effects of this remarkable fact: public opinion polls, for the first time in many decades, show that people no longer consider "crime" to be one of the nation's most important problems (as seen here, subscription required).

The list of possible effects is large. The conclusion I take away from this list is that I don't have to retool and become a National Security Law scholar. These events will come and find me where I'm working right now.