In September 11 Kent Roach provides a critical examination of the consequences of September 11 for law, democracy, sovereignty, and security. He assesses a broad range of anti-terrorism measures including the Anti-terrorism Act, the smart border agreement, Canadian participation in the war in Afghanistan, changes to refugee policy, the 2001 Security Budget, and the proposed Public Safety Act. Roach evaluates both the opposition of many civil society groups to the Anti-terrorism Act and the government's defence of the law as necessary to prevent terrorism and consistent with human rights. He warns that exceptions to legal principles made to fight terrorism may spread to attempts to combat other crimes and suggests that Canadian law may not provide adequate protection against invasions of privacy or discriminatory profiling of people as potential terrorists. With reference to controversial comments about September 11 made by Prime Minister Chretien and others and the debate about "anti-Americanism," Roach examines whether September 11 has chilled Canadian democracy. He also examines the challenge September 11 presents for Canadian sovereignty on key components of foreign, military, and immigration policy and the possibility that Canadian Forces participated in violations of international law in Afghanistan. With specific reference to the threat of nuclear and biological terrorism and aviation safety, Roach argues that more emphasis on administrative and technological measures and less emphasis on criminal sanctions and military force may better protect Canadians from both terrorism and other threats to their security.

Kent Roach is a professor of law and the Prichard-Wilson Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and of Yale University, and a former law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Roach has been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly since 1998. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2013 he was one of four academics awarded a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship. He is the author of twelve books, including Constitutional Remedies in Canada (winner of the Walter Owen Prize); Due Process and Victims’ Rights (shortlisted for the Donner Prize); The Supreme Court on Trial (shortlisted for the Donner Prize); Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (winner of the Dafoe Prize; co-authored with Robert J. Sharpe); and The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism (winner of the David Mundell Medal). He is the co-editor of several collections of essays and published casebooks, including most recently Comparative Counter-Terrorism Law, which arose from his role as General Reporter on Counter-Terrorism Law for the XIX International Congress on Comparative Law held in 2014. With Justice Robert Sharpe, he is the co-author of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms volume in Irwin Law’s Essentials of Canadian Law series. False Security: The Radicalization of Canada’s Terror Law, co-authored with Craig Forcese, was published by Irwin Law in 2015. He has also written over 200 articles and chapters published in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in Canada. Professor Roach has served as research director for the Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario (the Goudge Inquiry) and for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182. In both capacities, he edited multiple volumes of research studies. He served on the research advisory committee for the inquiry into the rendition of Maher Arar and the Ipperwash Inquiry into the killing of Dudley George. He was a special advisor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools. Professor Roach has represented Aboriginal and civil liberties groups in many interventions before the courts, including Gladue, Wells, Ipeelee, and Anderson on sentencing Aboriginal offenders; Latimer on mandatory minimum sentences; Stillman, Dunedin Construction, Downtown East Side Sex Workers, and Ward on Charter remedies; Golden on strip searches; Khawaja on the definition of terrorism; and Corbiere and Sauvé on voting rights. He is the faculty lead for the Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights.

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