Prevention, knowledge, justice: Robert Nozick and counterterrorism

ABSTRACT

This article explores questions of justice and moral permissibility of state action in counterterrorism through Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Using the case of the Berlin attack in December of 2016 and the ensuing political debate over whether potential terrorists could be put into preventive custody as an illustrative example, it engages Nozick’s argument on prevention, knowledge and justice. In Nozick’s fierce defence of individual rights, the state comes into being as an aggregate of individuals and their inviolable rights, and thus possesses no moral legitimacy of its own. Individual rights must therefore not be violated for the sake of common goods. In conjunction with his emphasis on free will and the ensuing unpredictability of human decision-making, the article highlights the Nozickian position as a powerful account against the justification of preventive custody, thereby providing a moral “fail-safe” in counterterrorism discourses that build on just war theory and utilitarianism.

KEYWORDS:

• Prevention
• knowledge
• justice
• rights

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented at the ISA Annual Convention, Baltimore, 22–25 February 2017. It has largely benefited from critical and constructive feedback provided by Myriam Dunn Cavelty, the editors at Critical Studies on Terrorism, as well as two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It should be noted that at the time of writing (April of 2017), Amri has not yet been officially convicted for the attack. There are, however, strong indications that he was in fact the attacker. Amri himself, after having fled from the authorities for several days, was shot by the police after having attacked two officers in Milano, Italy, on 23 December 2016.

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Notes on contributors

Matthias Leese

Matthias Leese is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich. His research interests are primarily located within critical security studies, surveillance studies, and STS.