ABSTRACT
My current research is on counter-terrorist lawmaking in the British parliament. Why this? For several reasons. First, this is an analytically neglected site in security studies that challenges some of the preoccupations of existing debates. In the last decade critical scholars have expended much energy discussing sovereign exceptionalism, detention camps, and other extreme security practices. My own work is a case in point (Neal 2010). Parliamentary lawmaking challenges this debate in several ways. Parliament is a site of multiple actors and discourses, collective groupings, differential relationships, and institutionalized practices. This contrasts with the singular executive decisionism considered in the Schmitt-influenced literature on exceptionalism and the “War on Terror”. The practice of lawmaking also contrasts with the practice of making exceptions to law.
