Overview

Every so often, a startling book emerges that gives voice to a new or previously unexamined trend that is transforming society. Alan M. Dershowitz's provocative new work, Preemption, is just such a book, chronicling a paradigm shift in our approach to controlling destructive conduct. As he reveals, we are movingwhether in society's manner of fighting crime or in our response to terrorismtoward more preventive and proactive approaches and away from primary reliance on deterrent and reactive responses. Although the events of 9/11 have accelerated this revolutionary shift, Dershowitz compellingly documents that the seeds were planted much earlier. In this thought-provoking account, Dershowitz explores the historical origins of the change as well as its troubling implication for civil liberties, human rights, criminal justice, national security, and foreign policy. About the series: Issues of Our Time? Aware of the competition for the attention of readers, W. W. Norton & Company and I have created the Issues of Our Time as a lucid series of highly readable books through which some of today's most thoughtful intellectuals seek to challenge the general reader to reexamine received truths and grapple with powerful trends that are shaping the world in which we live. The series launches with Anthony Appiah, Alan Dershowitz, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen as the first of an illustrious group who will tackle some of the most plangent and central issues defining our society today through books that deal with such issues as sexual and racial identities, the economics of the developing world, and the concept of citizenship in a truly globalized twenty-first-century world culture. Above all else, these books are designed to be read and enjoyed. -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

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9780393060126

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Reviews

One person's ounce of prevention is another's war crime: That's the slippery slope on which renowned legal scholar and commentator Dershowitz (Why Terrorism Works, 2002, etc.) develops his latest treatise. Proof of intent was once an evidentiary requirement, or at least desideratum, before jailing someone who might do wrong or attacking a country that might harbor terrorists. No more, not since 9/11. Writes Dershowitz, The shift from responding to past events to preventing future harms is one of the most significant but unnoticed trends in the world today. That trend works against a long tradition of deterrence, and, Dershowitz argues, prevention cannot be supported as a general principle because so much properly depends on the values at stake. If the U.S. could invade Iraq because its ruler was presumed to be developing weapons of mass destruction, could not Saddam Hussein bomb an American city with an eye to killing exiled enemies of his regime? The two positions are not so far apart. Yet, Dershowitz allows, there can be just cause to strike first: If England had attacked Germany in the mid-1930s in order to prevent rearmament and thus WWII, we might not really know what evil had been prevented, but we would remember that Britain had acted as an unprovoked aggressor. In this light, Dershowitz examines Israel's conduct in conflicts with its Arab neighbors, some of which he regards as lawful inasmuch as they meet international criteria of self-defense, others not. He then turns to the prospects of taking preventive measures against terrorism, which seems an uncertain enterprise at best and one likely to harm democratic values. There is a desperate need in the world for a coherent and widely accepted jurisprudence of preemption and prevention that would allow both self-defense and the defense of others, he writes-adding that those who advocate such prevention must be prepared to bear a heavy burden. Provocative, if unlikely to sway the present administration. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Leading criminal law and constitutional scholar Alan M. Dershowitz is the author of such critically acclaimed books as Rights from Wrongs, The Case for Israel, and Why Terrorism Works. A professor at Harvard Law School, he lives in Massachusetts.

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