Parallels between terrorism and piracy.

What is needed now is a framework for an international crime of terrorism. The framework should be incorporated into the U.N. Convention on Terrorism and should call for including the crime in domestic criminal law and perhaps the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. This framework must recognize the unique threat that terrorists pose to nation-states, yet not grant them the legitimacy accorded to belligerent states. It must provide the foundation for a law that criminalizes not only terrorist acts but membership in a terrorist organization. It must define methods of punishment.

Coming up with such a framework would perhaps seem impossible, except that one already exists. Dusty and anachronistic, perhaps, but viable all the same. More than 2,000 years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero defined pirates in Roman law as hostis humani generis, "enemies of the human race." From that day until now, pirates have held a unique status in the law as international criminals subject to universal jurisdiction—meaning that they may be captured wherever they are found, by any person who finds them. The ongoing war against pirates is the only known example of state vs. nonstate conflict until the advent of the war on terror, and its history is long and notable. More important, there are enormous potential benefits of applying this legal definition to contemporary terrorism.

It's always nice to have a new model to consider when dealing with a problem as intractable as terrorism. The "war" paradigm is simplistic and easily criticized, that of "law enforcement" toothless. I think the author neglects the special motivations of terrorists, but dealing with them as pirates were dealt with has a certain charm:

The gallows was a simple structure of two wooden uprights joined at the top by a crossbeam. A ladder was leaned against the gallows, and the rope with the hangman's noose was suspended from the beam. The pirate was helped up the ladder by the executioner, the noose was placed around his neck, and when the Marshal gave the signal, the executioner pushed him off into space.

--Under the Black Flag, David Cordingly