Security courts substitute racialized story-lines for evidence when cases lack corroboration

Evidence

In the absence in these cases of support for either the state’s case or the detainee’s, courts – for all the careful legal reasoning of decisions – come ultimately to rely on notions of sleeper cells and indicators of a detainee’s commitment to Islamic ideology. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 136

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: A sharp thesis: legal formalism masks an evidentiary void filled by racialized narrative. The central mechanism of the whole book.

Related

• Courts rely on sleeper-cell and ideology markers when evidence fails (similarity 0.87)
• Racialized assumptions substitute for evidence in finding detainees non-credible (similarity 0.82)
• Al Qaeda threat narratives rest on unspoken racial images rather than evidence (similarity 0.78)