Recent Articles

Sally Yates Did the Right Thing
As everyone knows by now, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates determined yesterday that, so long as she was Acting Attorney General, “the Department of Justice will not present…
The Early Edition: January 31, 2017
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. The MUSLIM BAN Acting Attorney…

Trump’s CIA Speech and Comey’s Letter Violated Federal Law
Politicizing security and intelligence services and the military is an all too familiar first step in a country’s transition from a representative democracy to a dictatorship.…

Steve Bannon Is Making Sure There’s No White House Paper Trail, Says Intel Source
If there was any question about who is largely in charge of national security behind the scenes at the White House, the answer is becoming increasingly clear: Steve Bannon, the…

Trump’s First Counterterrorism Operations and the Prior Interagency Review Process
When a U.S. service member or unanticipated civilian dies in a U.S. military operation, hard questions need to be asked about what happened and how to prevent such tragedies in…

Why a Muslim Ban is Likely to be Held Unconstitutional: The Myth of Unconstrained Immigration Power
Over the last few days, constitutional debates around the executive order President Trump signed on Friday have focused on two very different questions. The first is whether the…

Safe Zones for Syria: A List of Questions that Policymakers Need to Answer
President Donald Trump seems intent on creating so-called “safe zones” in Syria. Last week he told ABC’s David Muir, “I’ll absolutely do safe zones…
The Early Edition: January 30, 2017
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. The MUSLIM BAN “This is…

The Airport Cases: What Happened, and What’s Next?
Obviously, the story of the morning on Monday is going to be the rather tumultuous weekend that resulted from the Executive Order on immigration signed by President Trump late…

Do Public Protests Matter in a Democracy? The “outside strategy” as a signal of support to judges and bureaucrats
Opponents of President Donald trump mobilized record crowds to protest his anticipated policies – and the President and congressional Republicans largely ignored them. One…

The Muslim Ban, Judicial Review, and the Supreme Court
There’s so much to say about the Executive Order on immigration issued on Friday by President Trump. Much of it has been said by Ben Wittes, in his fantastic post on “Malevolence…

We’ll See You in Court: Why Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Violates the Establishment Clause
According to the Supreme Court, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v.…