Civil Liberties
1,474 Articles
The Muslim Ban, Judicial Review, and the Supreme Court
There’s so much to say about the Executive Order on immigration issued on Friday by President Trump. Much of it has been said by Ben Wittes, in his fantastic post on “Malevolence…
We’ll See You in Court: Why Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Violates the Establishment Clause
According to the Supreme Court, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v.…
Reflections on the prejudice in the draft Exec Order’s vetting of “prejudice”
On ABC News Wednesday night, President Donald Trump once again said that people coming into the United States would be subjected to “extreme vetting.” I think his expected…
What Did the Courts Say When Bush was Accused of Targeting Muslim Immigrants?
Looking out my window in lower Manhattan, and with Donald Trump’s inauguration just a few days behind us, it’s hard to stop thinking that a Muslim man, sitting in a chair with…
The U.S. Constitution and the Risk of Democratic Backsliding
Is there a real possibility of the erosion of democratic institutions toward authoritarianism in the United States? What can the experience of other countries tell us about how…
The CIA’s New Guidelines for Handling Americans’ Information
In acknowledgment of the mass scale of modern electronic intelligence collection, the Central Intelligence Agency today released newly updated guidelines governing how it treats…
The Supreme Court, the Trump Transition, and the Future of the Constitutional “Border”
With all due respect to the Emoluments Clauses, perhaps the most important set of constitutional questions implicated by the presidential transition involves the individual…
The President-Elect and the Logan Act
The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius has a really thoughtful new column summarizing the big questions surrounding the President-Elect, Russia, hacking, and the election. As…
Looking back at 2016, A Status Check on Government Hacking
Last year, the ongoing encryption debate took a backseat to a steady drip of stories and developments related to government hackings. This set the stage for a set of policy and…
A New Era of Mass Surveillance is Emerging Across Europe
The world was a different place when, in October 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down the “Safe Harbour” data-sharing agreement that allowed…
The 16 Most Popular Just Security Posts of 2016
Before we turn our attention to 2017, we thought we’d look back at the 16 most popular posts on Just Security over the past year. The topics include everything from surveillance…
Recent Rule 41 Changes: A Catch-22 for Journalists
In early December, the final effort in the Senate to delay amendments to Rule 41 of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure was blocked, putting the updates into effect and making…