25 Years After 9/11 Symposium

The 25 Years After 9/11 Symposium brings together legal scholars, practitioners, and others from across various disciplines to examine the enduring legacies of 9/11; the ways the legal and political architecture of the post-9/11 era continues to shape contemporary debates about race, migration, surveillance, war, technology, policing, and international law; and think collectively about how to chart a better path forward.

The Moment of Remembrance and Opening Remarks were given by Ahilan Arulanantham, Professor from Practice and Faculty Co-Director, Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law.

This panel will examine what happened after 9/11 and how US law and international human rights regimes have responded to (and have changed due to) the increased counterterrorism authority that the US executive, and executives around the world, have claimed post 9/11.  The focus will be on torture, rendition (including both extraordinary rendition and rendition to 3rd country detention in the immigration context today), and changes in detention regimes (both Guantanamo and immigration detention expansion).

Panelists: Amanda M. Klasing, National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy, Amnesty International USA; Melanie Partow, Trial Attorney, Military Commissions Defense Organization; Steven M. Watt, Senior Counsel, Human Rights Program, American Civil Liberties Union; Moderator: Richard L. Abel, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA School of Law.

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, the legal, political, and social transformations set in motion in its aftermath continue to shape governance, conflict, and everyday life. This opening plenary brings together three distinguished leaders whose scholarship, advocacy, and organizing have been central to understanding and challenging the enduring legacies of the post 9/11 era.

Drawing on perspectives from international law, constitutional law, civil rights advocacy, and community organizing, the panel will examine how responses to 9/11 reconfigured the relationship between security and liberty. The conversation will explore the evolution of the legal frameworks that have governed armed conflict, detention, surveillance, targeted killing, and other areas that have seen dramatic expansions of executive power, alongside the expansion of domestic security institutions and the profound consequences of racialized national security policies for Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities in the United States.

The discussion will also consider how these developments have reshaped democratic institutions, normalized exceptional forms of state power, and influenced broader debates about immigration, policing, and civil rights. Looking ahead, the panelists will reflect on the future of the legal and political architectures built in the name of national security, asking what has been entrenched, what may be changing, and what alternative visions of freedom, justice, and collective security are possible.

As the opening conversation for the symposium, this plenary will set the stage for a critical reassessment of the post-9/11 era and invite participants to imagine futures beyond the frameworks of fear, exclusion, and militarization that have defined the past quarter century.

Panelists: Hussam Ayloush, Chief Executive Officer, Council on American-Islamic Relations, CA; Aslı Ü. Bâli, Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Mohammad Tajsar, Director of Immigrants’ Rights, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California; Moderator: Ahilan Arulanantham, Professor from Practice and Faculty Co-Director, Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law.

This panel will examine how responses to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks transformed the international law governing the use of force and continues to shape contemporary conflicts. In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States and its allies advanced an expanded understanding of non-international armed conflict that enabled the “global war on terror” to transcend traditional geographic and temporal limits. The attacks also prompted significant developments in the law of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, including the claim that large-scale attacks by non-state actors may trigger the right to use force even absent direct state attribution. Related doctrines, including the controversial “unwilling or unable” test, further expanded claims regarding when and where force may be used against non-state actors operating within the territory of another state.

The panel will explore the evolving role of the UN Security Council in legitimizing counterterrorism operations, NATO’s unprecedented invocation of Article 5 following 9/11, and the long-term implications of these developments for collective security. Drawing on contemporary conflicts, panelists will assess whether post-9/11 legal paradigms have normalized increasingly expansive claims of wartime authority and weakened the prohibition on the use of force. The discussion will consider whether—and under what conditions—states can renew their commitment to the Charter framework and strengthen legal constraints on the resort to force in pursuit of a more peaceful international order.

Panelists: Tom Dannenbaum, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School; David Glazier, Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School; Saira Mohamed, Agnes Roddy Robb Chair in Jurisprudence, Ethics, and Social Responsibility and Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law; Rachel E. VanLandingham, Professor of Law and Lt Col, USAF (ret.), Southwestern Law School; Moderator: Jessica Peake, Professor of Law and Director, International & Comparative Law Program, UCLA School of Law.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in 2002 to address national security concerns in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Over the last 25 years, however, DHS has expanded its reach to become the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S. And in recent years, much of that growth has focused on restricting immigration and eroding longstanding protections for all immigrants, from asylum seekers at the U.S. border to people who have lived in the country for decades. A panel of experts will discuss how the fight against terrorism has been weaponized in the immigration context, and what the future may hold for immigrants, now 25 years after the 9/11 attacks.

Panelists: Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director, Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law; Jennie Pasquarella, Interim Executive Director, the Seattle Clemency Project; Silky Shah, Executive Director, Detention Watch Network; Moderator: Julia Preston, Journalist and Author, Preston Report.