A new book by Kent Law School Senior Lecturer Dr Gavin Sullivan provides a unique and critical socio-legal analysis of the UN Security Council’s counterterrorism listing regime and the global data infrastructures that sustain it.
The Law of the List: UN Counterterrorism Sanctions and the Politics of Global Security Law shows how governing though the list is transforming the Security Council and the international legal order in far-reaching ways. It engages with current debates in international law, critical security studies, global governance, Science and Technology Studies, governmentality scholarship and socio-legal studies and has been endorsed by world-leading experts from these different fields.
As a practising lawyer, Dr Sullivan has inside experience representing listed people in delisting proceedings before the UN Security Council, including individuals listed for allegedly being ‘associated with’ ISIL and Al-Qaida. He said: ‘Once on the list, they could not work or travel, it was a criminal offence for anyone to give them money, and there was no international legal process to challenge the the Security Council’s decision and uphold their human rights. It is a deeply unjust situation and this injustice was what first motivated me to write this book.’
Dr Sullivan also pointed to a dearth of empirical research on developments in global law and politics as the inspiration for him to undertake a detailed socio-legal study for The Law of the List: ‘The most extraordinary legal transformations in the global war on terror have taken place at the global level with very little public and academic debate, through the weaponization of the Security Council and dramatic expansion of their powers to counter urgent threats. Yet there is very little empirical research on how this global transformation is taking place and what its implications are for international law, global governance and the protection of human rights.’
Dr Sullivan teaches modules in Public Law, and Global Security Law at Kent Law School. His research focuses on the politics of global security law and global data infrastructures. It has been published in journals such as Transnational Legal Theory, the Leiden Journal of International Law, the American Journal of International Law and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space and supported by the British Academy.
Dr Sullivan has experience in human rights litigation. He coordinates the Transnational Listing Project – a global law clinic that provides pro bono representation to people targeted by security lists worldwide – and has represented numerous individuals in delisting proceedings before the UN Office of the Ombudsperson. He has advised peacebuilding organisations working in Somalia on the impact of counterterrorism measures on their work and the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on the human rights effects of laws targeting foreign terrorist fighters.
He is a member of the Law and Society Association, the European Society of International Law, the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the Law Society of England and Wales.
The Law of the List is published by Cambridge University Press as part of their Global Law series.