Recent Articles

What Fuels Autocracies Fuels Corruption
Hungary and Brazil aren’t outliers: Leaders in China, Bolivia, Cambodia, India, and elsewhere are using sweeping measures — some of them newly implemented — to restrict civil…

Ignore Trump’s Twitter Tantrum Executive Order and Address Disinformation Instead
The solution is not to give government or platforms more power to make opaque, arbitrary decisions on content, but to help users protect themselves.

Turned Away: The MS St. Louis and Its Echoes Today
In early June 1939, more than 900 passengers—almost all Jewish—sailed near the Florida coast aboard the MS St. Louis. Fleeing persecution by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in…

The Early Edition: June 5, 2020
Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and…

If We Could See Ourselves from the Outside
Can a change of perspective dislodge the assumed inevitability of an enduring democracy?

How Digital Contact Tracing for COVID-19 Could Worsen Inequality
The pandemic has punctuated systemic socio-economic disparities. Don't let reopening measures make them worse.

The Growing Irrelevance of State’s List of Countries Not Cooperating on Counterterrorism
Any certification that labels countries as not cooperating fully on counterterrorism and includes only the five countries listed by the State Department last month is less about…

The Early Edition: June 4, 2020
Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and…

The U.S. Constitution and Limits on Detention and Use of Force in Handling Civil Unrest
Under what circumstances may the government use lethal and non- or lesser-lethal force in the face of unlawful protests, riots, and looting?

Pompeo’s Personal Stake in the International Criminal Court’s Afghan Investigation
It is no secret that the Trump administration, in general, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, specifically, are hostile toward the International Criminal Court (ICC), particularly…

The Military Justice Dimension: Constraints on Military Personnel in Handling Civil Unrest
Top Expert Backgrounder: How the code of military justice applies to National Guard and other military personnel responding to protests. What must they do if the president issues…

Trump’s Moves Are Right Out of the Authoritarian Playbook
Trump's recent actions may be of a man fearful of looking weak to the world, but they are also redolent of how authoritarian regimes in countries the world over have responded…