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Exceptionalism, politics and liberty: a response to Professor Tushnet from the Antipodes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2008

Andrew Lynch*
Affiliation:
Director of the Terrorism and Law Project, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales

Abstract

In this comment, the author takes issue with Professor Tushnet’s favourable stance on the protection which political controls can afford human rights relative to legal ones. Writing in a jurisdiction with no formal legal instrument of human rights enables the author to speak with experience of the operation of political controls in a ‘pristine parliamentary environment’. The author outlines the ineffectiveness in the Australian experience of counter-terrorism since September 11 of many of the mechanisms which Tushnet has suggested impose constraints upon the diminishment of liberties. The comment concludes that the essential condition for the enhancement of political controls is the presence of legal ones.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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