Democracy & Rule of Law
Just Security’s expert authors provide analysis on threats and challenges to democracy and the rule of law in the United States and globally. Coverage includes analysis of the separation of powers, good governance, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, judicial independence, freedom of the press and association, and accountability for rule of law violations.
3,168 Articles
The Office of Legal Counsel and Secret Law
In theory, it’s the province of the judiciary to say what the law is, but in practice this task often falls to the Office of Legal Counsel. This is because many important questions…
Trump Tower Meeting Helps Show Collusion Up To Election Day
Just Security’s Rolf Mowatt-Larssen and Ryan Goodman make the following points. Knowing about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians on June 9, 2016, we can now understand much…
David Cole on Stopping Authoritarianism’s Rise in the United States
Since becoming National Legal Director of the ACLU, Just Security editorial board member David Cole has been spending a lot of time in Just Security’s home base of New…
A Guide to this Week’s News Coverage of Trump Jr.’s Russia Meeting
The Russia-Trump story accelerated this week as it was revealed that Don Jr.’s now infamous June 9 meeting at Trump Tower had little to do with adoptions, as he first claimed.…
Norms Watch: Democracy, the Trump Administration, and Reactions to It (July 7-July 14)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…
Considering the Legal Defenses of the Trump Jr. Meeting
A number of good legal commentaries have challenged rushing to judgment on the legal implications of the Trump campaign meeting with the Russian government. It is entirely fair…
What Trump Jr. Did Was Bad, But It Probably Didn’t Violate Federal Campaign Finance Law
The disclosure of emails documenting Donald Trump, Jr.’s arrangement of a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskay has lots of people asking whether he or the Trump campaign violated…
Voter Access, Not Voter Fraud, Is A Pressing National Security Issue
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity — a body set up by President Donald Trump to investigate “the registration and voting processes used in Federal…
The Call is Coming from Inside the House — Homegrown Extremism is Here
Much of our nation’s focus on preventing terrorist attacks has been on our borders, but, in fact, violent extremists are already here. It is like those old horror movies, where…
The Smoking Gun for Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump Campaign Committee
On Saturday, the New York Times broke the news of a previously unreported Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., Trump…
Explainer: The Special Counsel Investigation
All eyes are on Robert Mueller. In May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the former FBI Director as special counsel to oversee the Department of Justice’s Russia…
The Trump Administration Provides One More Reason to Discontinue CVE
In a post last week, Steve Weine celebrated the fact that the Obama administration’s countering violent extremism (CVE) program was still alive. In his view, “national security…