New book examines Sept. 11's place in history

Within hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center, the idea that the course of our collective history had forever changed was imprinted on American culture and politics. But was Sept. 11 really the dawning of a new age? Was it a transformative moment in history?

Two years later, scholars are examining the impact of Sept. 11 in the context of world history and offering new perspectives on what - if anything - has changed. In September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003), edited by USC Law Professor Mary L. Dudziak, contributors examine the impact of Sept. 11 on culture, American foreign policy, Islamic identity, language, international law and the U.S. justice system. The book came out of a symposium sponsored by the USC Center for Law, History and Culture in 2002, and organized by Dudziak and Howard Gillman, a USC political science professor.

"There's this ubiquitous assumption that this was 'the day we changed,'" says Dudziak, who holds the Judge Edward and Ruey L. Guirado Professorship in Law and History at USC. "This book tries to create a context for critical reflection about that idea. Have we changed? Or is Sept. 11 best understood as a continuation of pre-existing historical currents? Examining the assumption that Sept. 11 'changed everything' is important, because that idea has served as justification for profound departures in domestic and foreign policy."

In her introduction to the book, Dudziak notes that moments of crisis historically have facilitated social and political change by creating situations that seem to require new ways of thinking and new responses.

"For social change scholars," she writes, "the question is whether September 11…has shifted popular conceptions of the good in a way that will affect politics, ideas about justice, or perhaps our toleration of conditions of inequality."

Just as World War I and World War II were seen as new forms of warfare, Dudziak notes that President Bush has spoken of Sept. 11 as the start of a "new kind of war."

"Has a new age of terror dawned that makes constitutional restraints and the restraints of international law, crafted by earlier generations, anachronistic?" Dudziak asks. "Does a new approach to warfare require unfettered executive power? Does it justify the unilateralism of the United States as a global police power?"

In her contribution to the book, New York University Professor Marilyn Young argues that rather than change American foreign policy, Sept. 11 reinforced a preexisting unilateralism supported by several U.S. administrations that "have attempted to order the world so as to sustain the dominant power of the United States."

By asserting a unilateral right to respond to terrorism, the United States ignored mechanisms already in place to handle such crimes, such as the International Criminal Court, writes international law scholar Laurence Helfer. While he does not think Sept. 11 should be thought of as a transformative moment, he argues that the U.S. has become more ready to "claim for itself the right to respond to terrorism unilaterally" as a result of the attacks.

Legal theorist Ruti Teitel argues that the United States justified a departure from both criminal law and international law by characterizing Sept. 11 as an exceptional circumstance. And by acting as the "sovereign police," the United States justified its intervention in the war on terror but exempted itself from external regulation. However, Teitel warns, democratic legitimacy is threatened when responses to emergencies occur outside the law.

Ultimately, whether Sept. 11 was a transformative moment in history may be difficult to determine so soon after the attacks. But, Dudziak says, analyzing the political, legal and social consequences of the day is nevertheless crucial.

"Since Sept. 11, the idea of change has been deployed to justify departure from past practices, from a new secrecy in detention and deportation of non-citizens to the preemptive use of American military power," she writes. "There are immediate consequences of the idea of transformation." For that reason, rather than waiting for later generations to come to terms with this moment in history, "understanding Sept. 11 and its impact is a need and a responsibility of our own."

Besides Dudziak, contributors to the book were: Khaled Abou el Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law and acting professor at UCLA Law School; Christopher L. Eisgruber, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs, Princeton University; Laurence R. Helfer, Lloyd Tevis Fellow at Loyola Law School; Sherman A. Jackson, associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan; Amy Kaplan, professor of English and American studies at the University of Pennsylvania; Elaine Tyler May, professor of history and American studies at the University of Minnesota; Lawrence G. Sager, Jane Drysdale Sheffield Regents Chair, University of Texas at Austin School of Law; Ruti G. Teitel, Ernst C. Steifel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School; Leti Volpp, associate professor of law at American University; and Marilyn B. Young, professor of history at New York University.

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