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The book examines how governments and publics react to terrorist attacks in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. It focuses specifically on why civil liberties are abridged in some cases and not in others. The chapters cover the topic by looking at it through a number of different lenses, including topics like how governments might manipulate fear, public opinion trends after terrorist attacks, how the Patriot Act was passed, and case studies where legislation was blocked by the legislature and a government chief executive did not seek to pass legislation at all after a terrorist attack. This innovative book compares different responses to terrorism without simply focusing on the case of 9/11, and, through comparison, reveals new findings about best practices for dealing with terrorism. Freedom and Order gives a fine-grain analysis of how the Patriot Act was passed that does not exist in any other text to-date and compares public responses to terror attacks from three different countries. Rubin deals a blow to the theory that the public rallies around their leader after terrorist attacks and that civil liberties are always abridged after terrorist attacks.

This book forwards the debate on how to respond to terror attacks. It compares legislative responses to terrorism in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel finding that government centralization and abridgement of rights are common, but that the story is much more nuanced and complicated than at first meets the eye. Not all terror attacks lead to new legislation, many lead to muted responses.