Privatizing the Patriot Act: The Criminalization of Environmental and Animal Protectionists as Terrorists

https://www.animallaw.info/article/privatizing-patriot-act-criminalization-environmental-and-animal-protectionists-terrorists

• Author: Ethan Carson Eddy
• Place of Publication:  Pace Environmental Law Review
• Publish Year:  2005
• Primary Citation:  22 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 261 (Fall, 2005)

Summary:

This Article describes the model Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act its permutations currently pending in state legislatures, its proponents, and their motivations. It further explains the legal and rhetorical parallels between the Model Act and the USA Patriot Act. The Article predicts that courts will find the bills' constraints on speech to be undeniably content-based and without a sufficiently compelling state interest. In the end, the Article concludes by explaining how the bills exploit the USA Patriot Act's anti-terrorism rhetoric, and reveal a concerted corporate strategy to manipulate the term "terrorist" and capitalize on its potency, in an anticompetitive effort to secure protectionism from the adverse economic effects of criticism, protests, and boycotts.