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.
4,711 Articles
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…
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…
Are AQAP Domestic Insurgents in Yemen Covered by the AUMF?
According to Dan Klaidman’s excellent book, President Obama and John Brennan drew a red line in 2011: The United States would target members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…
Remembering Abu Ghraib (2): Not Company Men and Women
[This is the second of a two-part post on the tenth anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal. I broke it up for easier reading. The first part is here.] Most people will comply but some…
Remembering Abu Ghraib (1): Torture Everywhere and the Accountability Gap
[This is the first of a two-part post on the tenth anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal. I’ve broken it in half for easier reading.] No exceptional circumstances whatsoever,…
Intelligence Community Directive 119 and the First Amendment
As the inestimable Steve Aftergood noted last week over at Secrecy News, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has issued a new “Intelligence Community Directive”…
Petition denied in Hedges
The Supreme Court this morning unsurprisingly, and without comment, denied the petition for certiorari in Hedges v. Obama, No. 13-758. The plaintiffs in Hedges challenged the…
How “Overwhelming” was the UN General Assembly Vote on Crimea?
At a press conference in Kiev with the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Vice President Biden stated that the world’s rejection of Russia’s actions in Crimea was evident in last month’s…
Realpolitik and Closing Guantánamo: A Response to Deborah Pearlstein
A few weeks back, I posted about my new Fordham Law Review essay, “Detention After the AUMF,” which explains how the President could use existing authority–to…
Hussain and AUMF Repeal
In light of the ongoing discussion regarding Justice Breyer’s interesting statement regarding denial of certiorari in Hussain, I thought I’d flag a separate, but related,…
How We Read a NYTimes Story on Drone Strikes in Yemen
In this post, we’re trying something new. Below, we present an almost line-by-line annotation of yesterday’s New York Times story on US and Yemeni military operations in…
Consequences of the Fact-Based Armed Conflict Test in Yemen’s Internal Armed Conflict
Ryan’s recent post about ongoing “drone strikes” in Yemen raises an issue that has troubled me for quite some time from a legal, policy, and advocacy perspective. In the…