Democracy & Rule of Law
Rule of Law
941 Articles
A(nother) Procedural Roadblock for Drone Casualty Reporting Requirements
Yesterday, efforts to bring greater transparency to the U.S. drone program hit a(nother) legislative procedural roadblock, as the House Rules Committee voted to not include an…
Lavabit’s Owner Goes Public: His Legal Ordeal Makes For Bad Law
I’ve written several times here about the Department of Justice’s efforts to force secure email provider Lavabit to turn over its encryption keys. The DOJ wanted transactional…
Secret Courts and the Policy of “Neither Confirm Nor Deny”
On May 2, the English Court of Appeal gave judgment in (1) Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed (2) CF v Secretary of State for the Home Department. The case is the latest development in the…
Why Civil Libertarians and Drone Critics Should Support David Barron
Sen. Rand Paul has an op-ed in the New York Times today opposing the nomination of David J. Barron to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit until the memos Barron wrote…
Why Can’t We Even Say How Many We Have Killed?
On Monday, Just Security marked the ten-year anniversary of the disclosure of the Abu Ghraib scandal with a pair of eloquent posts by David Luban (Part 1 and Part 2). The Senate…
Drone Casualty Reporting Requirement Dropped from Intel Authorization Bill
Over the last several months, we’ve been following closely several legislative proposals in the House and Senate aimed at bringing greater transparency to the U.S. drone…
White House Makes Reassuring Noises On 0-Day Policy
Yesterday afternoon, the White House put out a statement describing its view of vulnerability disclosure: the contentious issue of whether and when government agencies should disclose…
Secrets Revealed: The Government’s No Fly List Arguments Aren’t Flying
Last week Judge William Alsup (N.D. Cal.) released the unredacted version of his ruling in the first-ever challenge to the no-fly list to be decided on the merits – a case that…
Letter to the Editor from Gabor Rona, Airstrikes in Yemen and Government Transparency
Thanks Ryan and Sarah for an excellent analysis of the NY Times article on the recent military activity in Yemen. In noting that the article is imprecise in its reference to “alleged…
Court Decision Supports Broader Disclosures on US Drone War
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision yesterday that the Obama administration had waived its right to refuse to turn over legal memos justifying the killing of a U.S.…
The Second Circuit and the Vices of Selective Disclosure
I’ve now had a full day to digest yesterday’s lengthy decision by the Second Circuit in New York Times v. Department of Justice, which, among other things, orders…
Representatives Schiff and Jones Introduce Bill to Increase Transparency in U.S. Drone Program
Today, Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) introduced new legislation aimed to bring greater transparency to the U.S. drone program. The Targeted Lethal…