Suggested Readings: The Law and the War

All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime
By William H. Rehnquist
ISBN: 0-67-976732-0

Rehnquist defends the right of government to engage in conduct that infringes on civil liberty in wartime but acknowledges that such actions must be vigilantly monitored and not permitted to go beyond what the immediate set of circumstances demands. . . . Leaving the legal issues to the courts to sort out can take considerable time and does not provide immediate relief to those whose basic right have been violated. [But Rehnquist] argues that courts are much more likely to be sympathetic to rights violations after a war is over than during it. . . . All the Laws but One offers intelligent, balanced commentary on how the nation has addressed civil liberty claims in time of national emergency. It is a valuable book, both for what it tells about past cases and for the insights it offers on how the current chief justice might approach such cases in the future.
— James D. Fairbanks, The Houston Chronicle

The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties
By Mark E. Neely Jr.
ISBN: 0195064968

Mark E. Neely Jr. has done a prodigious job of research and a masterly job of organization and interpretation to fashion a milestone study of civil liberties in civil war. . . . The records Neely has unearthed suggest that the Union government stumbled forward in hapless confusion, trying desperately to keep itself together against genuine enemies from without and both real and imagined ones from within. . . Neely convincingly argues that chaos was inevitable during this unprecedented crisis. Lincoln, he points out, had good reason to worry about internal disruption and had ample moral grounds to do what was necessary, even extra-constitutionally, to save the Union. As Lincoln put it with his usual clarity: "Often a limb must be sacrificed to save a life." He may have sacrificed the 'limb' temporarily, but Neely demonstrates that these policies neither deserve to alter Lincoln's reputation as statesman nor invite a new one as tyrant.
— Harold Holzer, The Chicago Tribune

Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network, 2001 Edition
By Benjamin Netanyahu
ISBN: 0374524971

The book, first published in 1995, contains a new foreword with Netanyahu's testimony before Congress Sept. 20—nine days after the attacks. The text is otherwise unchanged, but many of his points seem even more pertinent in the wake of the attacks.
Like his testimony, his short book gets right to the point.
"What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of our civilization," he writes.
But the MIT-educated Netanyahu, who has lived in the United States at various times, says the battle against terrorism will come at the expense of civil liberties.
"Every one of the active steps that a democratic state can take against domestic terrorists constitutes a certain curtailment of someone's freedom to speak, assemble or practice his religion without interference," he says. . . .
Since the attacks, the United States has enacted at least three of his proposals—greater surveillance of suspected terrorists, sharing intelligence among nations, and freezing the assets of terrorist groups.
— Dave Newbart, The Chicago Sun-Times

Militant Islam Reaches America
By Daniel Pipes
ISBN: 0393052044

Pipes presents here the results of his research, dividing his work into two key subjects. First, he explains what militant Islam is and stresses the large and crucial difference between Islam, the faith, and militant Islam, the ideology. He demonstrates that it is not a clash of civilizations underway, but a battle for the soul of Islam among Muslims themselves. He shows that militant Islam is not caused mainly by poverty and that its adherents, far from being the dispossessed, tend to include the more talented and Westernized elements. Militant Islam strikingly has much in common with fascism and communism. . . .
Secondly, Pipes takes up the relatively new subject of Islam in the United States, and how it has rapidly developed in the last decade. . . .
Pipes concludes that, like it or not, the United States is now party to the difficult task of modernizing Islam globally; he argues that this is the ultimate aim of the war on terrorism.
— Publisher's description