Overview
Developing a national policy for compensating victims of terrorism through research and dialogue with an interdisciplinary team of practitioners and academics.
Following the 9/11 attacks, Congress promptly passed victim compensation legislation to address the social, political and economic needs of the nation. One consequence of Congress's expeditious provision of a compensation fund was that important policy decisions regarding victim compensation were made without much public participation or careful debate and in the context of the federal government's effort to save the airline industry. The fund that was established to supplant traditional tort actions was administered by a special master who was given wide discretion in determining the administrative procedures and compensation awards. Whatever the success of the 9/11 Fund, few argue that an after-the-fact scheme is the best way to address the important issues related to compensating victims of terrorism. At the same time, the compensation funding scheme has gained some traction as a policy option for compensating victims of mass torts. Variations on the funding scheme were established after the 2007 I-35T Minnesota bridge collapse, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, and the recent BP oil spill.
This project addresses questions of how and to what extent to provide compensation for victims of terrorism - through the generosity of charitable organizations, a publicly-funded compensation scheme, private insurance, tort suits or some combination. In the case of programmatic funding schemes like the 9/11 Fund, experts are analyzing the best administrative models for allocating and distributing funds.
Research and Workshops
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Events and Announcements
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Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives
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The Victims Compensation project seeks to analyze compensation schemes and their mechanisms in order to recommend ways forward in improving and developing compensation policies, achieved through the convening of workshops and collaborative research.
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INSCT seeks to facilitate the building of partnerships to advance its research agenda and raise public awareness with events, speakers and roundtable discussions.
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The Syracuse University Archives established this special archives in 1990 to bring together in one place materials generated regarding the disaster and make those materials available for research, and provide a place to personalize our students whose lives were lost; where their families can donate materials by or about them to let the world know in some way what has been lost by their deaths.
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Contact