Sign up to receive updates on the symposium

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the legal, political, social, and technological transformations initiated in response to the attacks continue to shape law and society in profound ways. The attacks themselves killed nearly 3,000 people, forever altering the lives of their families, and communities, and the nation. In response, the government declared a “War on Terror” and vowed to enhance the nation’s security. The post-9/11 era ushered in sweeping expansions of state power with which we all live to this day. These developments transformed domestic and international law while reshaping the lives of people both in the U.S. and abroad who were targeted by racialized national security policies, immigration enforcement, policing, and war. 

Over the past quarter century, many of the state responses forged during the “War on Terror” within the U.S. have expanded. From border militarization and mass industrialized surveillance to the normalization of endless war, suppression of dissent, intensified policing and more, the infrastructures of the post-9/11 security state continue to reverberate across political and legal life. Over time, the boundaries between foreign war, domestic policing, and state and corporate actors have increasingly collapsed; the distinction between emergency national security measures and routine domestic governance has become blurred; and surveillance infrastructures, counterterrorism frameworks, and militarized tactics now circulate across borders, shaping the government’s responses to domestic protest movements, migration, and routine criminal activity alike. 

The frameworks created by the state response to 9/11 were no less significant overseas. Those dynamics continue to reverberate abroad across contemporary conflicts and crises, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza, renewed war across the Middle East, the global rise of authoritarianism, and attacks on protest movements around the world.  

Twenty-five years later, the post-9/11 legal order continues to raise urgent questions about how “security” has been mobilized to justify state violence, exclusion, surveillance, and the erosion of freedom. At stake are fundamental questions about the future of law, human rights, and democratic life in an era defined by securitization and permanent emergency. 

This 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. 

Sponsored by the UCLA School of Law’s Critical Race Studies Program, International & Comparative Law Program, Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, Promise Institute for Human Rights, and Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law & Policy.

For any questions, please contact crs@law.ucla.edu.