Academic Consensus and Legislative Definitions of Terrorism: Applying Schmid and Jongman

Abstract

In the decade post 11 September 2001, numerous states have found the need to legislate against terrorism-frequently defining terrorism. In R v. Gul, the Court of Appeal surveyed some of those legislative definitions in an attempt to discern a customary international law definition of terrorism in one specific context. This paper seeks to broaden that enterprise. In 1989, Schmid and Jongman sent a questionnaire and proposed definition of terrorism to 200 acknowledged terrorism experts; they received 109 responses, which they coded according to 22 word categories; the 109 responses triggered, on average 8 of the 22 codes. Utilizing the Schmid and Jongman methodology, and based on the R v. Gul survey of jurisdictions, this paper examines seven legislative definitions of terrorism. On average, the legislative definitions also triggered 8 of the 22 codes. The article examines the correlations and divergences between the academic consensus definition and the legislative definitions. © The Author 2012.