Executive Branch
Just Security’s expert authors provide analysis of the U.S. executive branch related to national security, rights, and the rule of law. Analysis and informational resources focus on the executive branch’s powers and their limits, and the actions of the president, administrative agencies, and federal officials.
4,757 Articles
The War in Afghanistan is Far from Over
Tuesday was an ominous one for news about Afghanistan. While much of the media’s attention has recently been focused on Syria, Iraq, and Ebola, NATO is still facing challenges…
Chemical Weapons and Secrecy: a Terrible Combination
Last week’s New York Times article detailing the fact that, between 2004 and 2011, American troops in Iraq “secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells…
Military Commissions After Guantánamo
This Wednesday morning at 9:30 (EDT), a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit (Henderson, Rogers, & Tatel, JJ.) will hear oral argument in al Bahlul v. United States–a Guantánamo…
“Just looking for loopholes…”
…is what W. C. Fields supposedly said when someone found him leafing through the Bible. Apparently some lawyers in the Obama administration are following Fields’s lead,…
Ebola Could Become President Obama’s Katrina
Ebola could become President Barack Obama’s hurricane Katrina in terms of the inadequacy of the government’s response. The US government is in reaction mode, seemingly…
One More Thing on Goldsmith & Waxman
There is not much to add to my colleague Shalev Roisman’s response to Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Waxman’s essay in The New Republic arguing that it is President Obama, and…
Security “Front Doors” vs. “Back Doors”: A Distinction Without a Difference
Thursday, FBI Director James Comey delivered a talk at the Brookings Institution, titled “Going Dark: Are Technology, Privacy, and Public Safety on a Collision Course?” His…
Rejecting the Bush Comparison: A Response to Goldsmith & Waxman
Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Waxman have written an interesting essay on President Obama’s war powers legacy, boldly titled “Obama, not Bush, is the Master of Unilateral War.”…
New al-Nashiri developments . . . regarding the MV Limburg and USS COLE charges [UPDATED as of late November]
In recent days the lawyers for Abd al-Rahim Hussain al-Nashiri, the military commission defendant charged with involvement in the bombings of the USS COLE and MV Limburg, have…
Authorizing Force: A Review of Turkish, Dutch and French Action
As the number of states using military force against ISIS in Syria and Iraq have increased, a series of domestic authorizations have emerged from their national executives and…
CIA Report: Giving Rebels Weapons Without Direct Support Rarely Helps
This morning, the New York Times ran a story about an internal CIA study commissioned in the last two years that found the agency’s historic efforts to arm rebels have had a…
Executive Order 12333 and the Golden Number
I recently moderated a debate between Professor Nathan Sales of Syracuse Law, Professor Laura Donohue of Georgetown Law, Bob Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director…