Title

Are We Unnecessarily Serving Up Civil Liberties on a PATRIOT Platter?

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify the general cognitive biases and overall measurement errors inherent in recent studies seeking to measure the effects of terrorism. Such biases lead to unprincipled conclusions founded upon incomplete information. These problems are exacerbated by inaccurate measures of the true impact of terrorism on the economy, the human psyche, policy-making and the world community. Such measurement errors severely diminish the probative value of the studies and lead to merely speculative conclusions. The goal of this paper is to shed light on these inaccurate conclusions in the hope that future legislation and practices aimed at curbing terrorism are not based on the inaccurate conclusions concerning the social and economics effects of terrorism.

Disciplines

Criminal Law | Criminal Procedure | Economics | Law and Economics | Law and Society

Date of this Version

March 2006