Federal Courts
190 Articles
Judge (Justice?) Merrick Garland & International Law
I recently had occasion to review the international law jurisprudence of Judge Merrick Garland as part of an evaluation prepared by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee…
The Encryption Debate: All Quiet on the Western Front?
The US war on encryption has quieted down recently. The San Bernardino and Brooklyn court cases concerning encrypted iPhones both ended this spring not with a bang, but with a…
Guilty Pleas For GTMO Detainees (Without Ever Setting Foot on US Soil)
Last week Steve wrote about the then-not-yet public provision in the Senate version of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would permit Guantánamo detainees…
A Supplement to Steve Vladeck’s Assessment of the Supreme Court’s Treatment of Courts-Martial
Professor Steve Vladeck recently published an interesting analysis of the Supreme Court’s “troubling neglect of courts-martial,” and I agree with most of what he puts forth.…
Transparency, Review, and Relief: The Far-Reaching Implications of the Kunduz Report
Thus far, many discussions of the US military’s release of a 120-page detailed report of the lawfulness of its attack on the Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) facility in Kunduz,…
Fourth Circuit To Hear Abu Ghraib Political Question Doctrine Appeal
Tomorrow morning, an (as-yet-unannounced) panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear the (third!) appeal in Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc.,…
Are US Courts Going Dark?
Now that the cell phones in San Bernardino and Brooklyn have been unlocked (no thanks to Apple), FBI warnings about “going dark” in the face of advancing digital encryption…
One-and-a-Half Cheers for Salim v. Mitchell
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
FOIA Litigation Has Its Own Rules, But We Deserve Better
When will federal judges start acting more like State Department flacks? It’s a question worth thinking about during Sunshine Week. For those of us who regularly litigate national…
DOJ’s appeal to district court judge from Magistrate Orenstein’s rejection of Apple All Writs Act order
is here; I have not yet read it. It will be considered by Judge Margo Brodie.
A Readers’ Guide to the Apple All Writs Act Cases
The last few weeks and months have been awash in media coverage of two cases before magistrate judges involving the federal government seeking to use the All Writs Act to compel…
[UPDATED] Magistrate Judge Orenstein’s order in the EDNY, denying DOJ’s All Writs Act request . . .
. . . is here. The order that the government requested the judge to issue would have required Apple to bypass the passcode security on an iPhone 5s (which used Apple’s iOS…