•  
  •  
 

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-15-2019

Publication Citation

26 Indiana J. Global Legal Studies 61 (2019)

Abstract

The U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act is legislation that simultaneously brings into being very particular notions of the American 'national' and, as its counterpart, a post-9/11 "global." Through a study of the Patriot Act, my paper unpacks the co-constitutions of national/global and a related series of binaries: domestic/foreign; patriot/terrorist; us/them; and innocence/evil. By exploring the structuring logics and language of these binaries in the Act, my paper scrutinizes the global role of U.S. legislative text in our world: a world in which "a global society has come into being but possesses as yet, no institutions proper to its name."1 In the context of our global perpetual war, I challenge our understandings of the categories structuring the Patriot Act to point to the specific ways in which law and war are co-constituted in our present.

Download
COinS