ON TERRORISM-RELATED MEDIA-HYPE SCRUTINY

Unlearned Hand has an excellent post on the Captain Yee case, here. Here's part of the post:

There is always something discomfiting about seeing someone punished for crimes that we overlook most of the time. Perhaps it clashes with our intuitions about notice and the rule of law. Perhaps it raises our suspicions that some ulterior motives are at work, and certainly Captain Yee's religion makes that a real possibility. And yet I take it we have these laws on the books for a reason. They are, at least in some cases, supposed to be enforced. Perhaps the best we can say is that Captain Yee was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That doesn't seem very satisfying.

Investigations themselves have a kind of punitive aspect to them. People have often said over the past few years that additional scrutiny of religious and ethnic minorities is no big deal, since, "if they haven't done anything wrong, what do they have to worry about?" Well, the best response is: the additional scrutiny is itself something to worry about. Second, in Establishment Clause cases, you can find a lot of language about the importance of individual citizens feeling that they are part of the community, that they are not somehow lesser citizens because of their religious beliefs. The same concern should be brought to bear here, I think, although it's not clear to me how this can be done. More secrecy at the investigative stage? That's problematic. Tighter reins on the media? Rules to rein in prosecutorial discretion? Presumably experts in military investigations would themselves be best equipped to make recommendations. One thing does seem clear, however: in any given case, the urge to declare a victory against al Qaeda should be contained until actual terrorism-related charges are brought against a particular individual.

MORE: In only tangentially related news, if you happen to be in the wild woods of Oswego County on March 3, come watch Volker Schloendorff and Margarethe von Trotta's adaptation of Heinrich Boell's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975). I'll be moderating a discussion afterward. The movie is about the police investigations and media furor that surround a young woman after she has a relationship with a man who, unbeknownst to her, is suspected of being a member of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. I still think that this is a movie that everyone in the U.S. should watch. Germans have had to deal with the wrenching questions of how they can respond to terrorism and still remain respectful of civil liberties. The results were not always successful, but we can learn from them. 7 p.m., Lanigan 107.