Watching Brief is a collection of essays and meditations on law, justice, human rights, ethics and, ultimately, on what constitutes a decent human society. It is also an impassioned and eloquent appeal for vigilance in an era in which 'national security' trumps democratic principle, where the legal conventions of the new realpolitik owe more to Guantanamo than Geneva, and where respect for law and the principle of respect owed to all human beings are being undermined. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen an extraordinary decline in respect for human rights and the international rule of law. Illegal wars, the secret rendition and illegal detention of terror suspects, the failure to honour the international refugee convention through the mandatory detention or forced return of asylum-seekers, anti-sedition legislation, and secretive and draconian anti-terror laws all seem to have become permanent features of the post 9/11 world.
