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Full-Text Articles in Law
Questioning Deference, Christina E. Wells
Questioning Deference, Christina E. Wells
Missouri Law Review
Part I of this Article discusses executive branch actions in the crises discussed earlier and identifies a pattern of response to certain perceived threated. Part II assesses this historical pattern in light of a psychological understanding of risk assessment, concluding that the pattern is consistent with predictably skewed risk assessment. Part III discusses the psychology of accountability and the possibility that judicial review can serve as a mechanism of accountability and improve executive decision making.
War Fever Symposium:, Geoffrey R. Stone
War Fever Symposium:, Geoffrey R. Stone
Missouri Law Review
As Justice Robert Jackson observed more than half a century ago, “[i]t is easy, by giving way to the passion, intolerance and suspicion of wartime, to reduce our liberties to a shadow, often in answer to exaggerated claims of security.” Indeed, the United States has a long and unfortunate history of overreacting to the dangers of wartime. Again and again, Americans have allowed fear to the better of them. Some measure of fear, of course, is inevitable—even healthy—in time of war. Otherwise, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a nation to make the sacrifices war demands. An essential …
Encouraging Courage: Law's Response To Fear And Risk, William B. Fisch
Encouraging Courage: Law's Response To Fear And Risk, William B. Fisch
Faculty Publications
Our three papers provide a helpful review of the many things that can go wrong with our system for the protection of civil liberties under the pressures of war or other emergencies. Professor Winfield focuses on the U.S. Attorney General, the non-judicial officer from whom the public might expect the highest fidelity to the law and the constitution. She offers a sobering perspective on the ways in which those expectations can be and have been disappointed. The star of her taxonomy, I take it, is the Leveler, who reaches an independent (and rights-protective!) view of the law and works to …
Questioning Deference, Christina E. Wells
Questioning Deference, Christina E. Wells
Faculty Publications
This article examines the accepted axiom that courts should defer to the government's actions during national security crises even when such actions potentially violate citizens' constitutional rights. The paper questions two assumptions underlying that axiom - first, that executive officials are best equipped to determine when security needs justify liberty infringements and, second, that judges are particularly unqualified to meddle in security issues, even when civil liberties are involved. Relying on psychological theories regarding the role that fear plays in skewing risk assessment and historical analyses of past crises, the paper argues that times of crisis lend themselves to unnecessary …