National Security Law Commons^™

The Impact Of The 9/11 Attacks On National Security Law Casebooks, Tung Yin

St. Thomas Law Review

In this book review, I use the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent American responses as a framework for reviewing four casebooks currently available for use in courses on national security or antiterrorism. It is hardly surprising that law professors might themselves respond to the 9/11 attacks by adjusting content in appropriate courses. While casebooks may have other uses, their primary purpose is undoubtedly intended to be in law school courses. In turn, law school courses have a number of goals, among them the imparting of substantive knowledge in the particular field of law, as well as the development of students' …

Examining The Declining Utility Of Military Force, Ali Wyne

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 270pp.

Muslim Profiles Post-9/11: Is Racial Profiling An Effective Counterterrorist Measure And Does It Violate The Right To Be Free From Discrimination?, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Racial profiling as a defensive counterterrorism measure necessarily implicates a rights trade-off: if effective, racial profiling limits the right of young Muslim men to be free from discrimination in order to promote the security and well-being of others. Proponents of racial profiling argue that it is based on simple statistical fact and represents just smart law enforcement. Opponents of racial profiling, like New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly, say that it is dangerous and just nuts.

As a theoretical matter, both sides are partly right. Racial profiling in the context of counterterrorism measures may increase the detection of terrorist …

Waging War Against Terror: An Essay For Sandy Levinson, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Wars are acts of State, and therefore there has never been a "war on terror." Of course states have fought terrorism, in many guises, for centuries. But a war on terror had to await the development of states – including virtual states like al Qaeda's global ummah – whose constitutional order was not confined to a particular territory or national group and for whom terror could therefore be a permanent state of international affairs, either sought in order to prevent persons within a state's control from resisting oppression by accessing global, empowering resources and networks, or suffered because other states …

Self-Regulation For Safety And Security: Final Minutes Or Finest Hour?, Douglas C. Michael

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the accounting and auditing crisis later caused by the Enron and Worldcom scandals of that same year, created a great sense of insecurity in many Americans. In this Article, I analyze the federal government's response to crisis. I first define what a crisis is: a sudden, existential threat to which the entity has insufficient resources to respond. I then explain how regulation for safety and security is unique in two aspects: perceptions matter, and the assistance of the regulated entities is essential. I proceed by describing and analyzing the regulatory history and …

Constitutional Cash: Are Banks Guilty Of Racial Profiling In Implementing The United States Patriot Act?, Cheryl R. Lee

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article begins by comparing the concerns of American racial profiling to current terrorism concerns. Part II is an overview of the Bank Secrecy Act and its role in privacy issues concerning bank customers (as the predecessor to the USA Patriot Act). Here, the value of traditional reporting devices, specifically CTRs and SARs used by banks to alert law enforcement to possible terrorist activities, are discussed and evaluated. The facts suggest these reports have been ineffective in identifying terrorists, and have not only greatly infringed upon First Amendment privacy rights, but also diminished the Fourth Amendment protection against warrant-less searches …

The Usa Patriot Act: A Policy Of Alienation, Kam C. Wong

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article provides a brief overview of how Muslims were treated after 9/11. It documents how the USAPA and related measures have been used to monitor, investigate, detain, and deport Muslim U.S. citizens in violation of their civil rights. Of particular importance, is how the life circumstances of the Muslims in America have changed for the worse as a result of zealous enforcement and discriminatory application of the USAPA. In so doing, this Article seeks to provide concrete facts and a rich context to ascertain the implications of 9/11 on American society.

Cia V. Sims: Mosaic Theory And Government Attitude, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

In CIA v. Sims, the United States Supreme Court held that the CIA could withhold information about controversial government-sponsored psychological experiments in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Court reasoned that the requested information would reveal intelligence sources related to national defense, which were specifically protected from disclosure under the National Security Act of 1947. Accordingly, the Court concluded that the CIA could refuse to disclose the information under FOIA Exemption 3, which allows withholding of information “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute.” Numerous scholars assailed Sims, arguing that the Court's broad reading of the National Security …

Aedpa: The "Hype" And The "Bite", John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

On April 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Thus, the AEDPA era began. While Clinton's presidential signing statement paid lip service to meaningful federal court review of state court convictions, AEDPA's supporters knew better. The fix was in, and happy habeas days were here again. But, as the old saying goes, "What if you gave a revolution and nobody came?" As I will argue, that is in many (but not all) respects what happened. In this Article, I have argued that AEDPA was, in many respects, more "hype" than "bite." For …

Truth And Consequences: First Amendment Protection For Accurate Reporting On Government Investigations, Jonathan Donnellan, Justin Peacock

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Issues In Article Iii Courts, Debra A. Livingston

Faculty Scholarship

Cases implicating classified information can pose difficult legal issues for Article III courts, and these issues may well grow more complicated and arise more frequently as the global war on terror continues. The manner in which these issues are resolved has profound implications for the national security, for the procedural rights of litigants, and for the public's ability to scrutinize legal proceedings. Indeed, the expanded use of secret evidence in Article III courts may raise questions about the very character of the courts themselves. Is there a point at which the demands placed upon these courts, pushing them in the …

The Limits Of Courage And Principle, Jedediah Purdy

Michigan Law Review

Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is not a lawyer. His work, however, treats issues of core concern to lawyers: nation-building, human rights, the ethics of warfare, and now, in his latest book, the proper relationship between liberty and security. The Lesser Evil is, in part, a book a legal scholar might have written: a normative framework for lawmaking in the face of the terror threat. It is also something more unusual: an exercise in an older type of jurisprudence. Ignatieff discusses law in the light of moral psychology …

Fighting Terrorism And Preserving Civil Liberties, James B. Comey

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Let The People Know The Facts: Can Government Information Removed From The Internet Be Reclaimed?, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

Ms. Mart examines the legal bases of the public's right to access government information, reviews the types of information that have recently been removed from the Internet, and analyzes the rationales given for the removals. She suggests that the concerted use of the Freedom of Information Act by public interest groups and their constituents is a possible method of returning the information to the Internet.

When Liberty And Security Collide: Foreign Policy Litigation And The Federal Judiciary, Kirk A. Randazzo

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Implications Of The Small V. United States Decision, Anwar K. Malik

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Defending Human Rights In The "War" Against Terror, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

Safeguarding human rights in our "war" against terrorism is both the right and the smart thing to do. It is right because human rights embody our fundamental values as Americans and as Christians. Our Constitution stands for freedom; our Creator teaches us to respect the God-given dignity of each human soul. Christians are called to cherish human dignity, not only of innocents, and not only of captives in war whose status as combatant or civilian may be uncertain, but also of cardinal sinners, the terrorists themselves. Christ Jesus teaches us to hate the sin, but somehow to bring ourselves to …

Fear, Legal Indeterminacy, And The American Lawyering Culture, Michael Hatfield

Articles

On August 1, 2002, then Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee signed for President Bush a memorandum of law concluding that some torture was not necessarily illegal if the President ordered it. This Essay examines how Bybee could arrive at a conclusion that is fundamentally at odds with both our national moral spirit and our law. In doing so, it cautions American lawyers to recognize the difference between what is "legal" and what is "arguably legal, " and to be aware of their own extra-legal biases when interpreting the law.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold War: Intelligence And International Law, Simon Chesterman

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article will focus on the narrower questions of whether obtaining secret intelligence-that is, without the consent of the state that controls the information-is subject to international legal norms or constraints, and what restrictions, if any, control the use of this information once obtained. Traditional approaches to the question of the legitimacy of spying, when even asked, typically settle on one of two positions: either collecting secret intelligence remains illegal despite consistent practice, or apparent tolerance has led to a "deep but reluctant admission of the lawfulness of such intelligence gathering, when conducted within customary normative limits.” Other writers have …

Anti-Terrorist Finance In The United Kingdom And United States, Laura K. Donohue

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article adopts a two-tiered approach: it provides a detailed, historical account of anti-terrorist finance initiatives in the United Kingdom and United States-two states driving global norms in this area. It then proceeds to a critique of these laws. The analysis assumes-and accepts-the goals of the two states in adopting these provisions. It questions how well the measures achieve their aim. Specifically, it highlights how the transfer of money laundering tools undermines the effectiveness of the states' counterterrorist efforts-flooding the systems with suspicious activity reports, driving money out of the regulated sector, and using inappropriate metrics to gauge success. This …

The National Security Agency's Domestic Spying Program: Framing The Debate, David Cole, Martin S. Lederman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On Friday, December 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that President George W. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans' telephone and e-mail communications as part of an effort to obtain intelligence about future terrorist activity.' The Times report was based on leaks of classified information, presumably by NSA officials concerned about the legality of the program. The Times reported that at the President's request it had delayed publication of the story for more than a year.

The Indiana Law Journal reprinted four documents that, taken together, set forth the basic …

Optimal Liability For Terrorism, Darius N. Lakdawalla, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

This paper analyzes the normative role for civil liability in aligning terrorism precaution incentives, when the perpetrators of terrorism are unreachable by courts or regulators. We consider the strategic interaction among targets, subsidiary victims, and terrorists within a sequential, game-theoretic model. The model reveals that, while an "optimal" liability regime indeed exists, its features appear at odds with conventional legal templates. For example, it frequently prescribes damages payments from seemingly unlikely defendants, directing them to seemingly unlikely plaintiffs. The challenge of introducing such a regime using existing tort law doctrines, therefore, is likely to be prohibitive. Instead, we argue, efficient …

Cybertrespass And Trespass To Documents, Kevin Emerson Collins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Anti-Terrorist Finance In The United Kingdom And United States, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article adopts a two-tiered approach: it provides a detailed, historical account of anti-terrorist finance initiatives in the United Kingdom and United States—two states driving global norms in this area. It then proceeds to a critique of these laws. The analysis assumes—and accepts—the goals of the two states in adopting these provisions. It questions how well the measures achieve their aim. Specifically, it highlights how the transfer of money laundering tools undermines the effectiveness of the states' counterterrorist efforts—flooding the systems with suspicious activity reports, driving money out of the regulated sector, and using inappropriate metrics to gauge success. This …

Anglo-American Privacy And Surveillance, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States’ Terrorism Surveillance Program represents just one of many expansions in surveillance since 9/11, as legal controls previously introduced to protect citizens’ privacy and to prevent the misuse of surveillance powers have been relaxed. What makes the situation qualitatively different now is not just the lowering of the bar: digitization and the rapid advancement of technology mean that the type and volume of information currently available eclipse that of previous generations. The issue is not confined to the United States. Despite the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into British law, the United Kingdom also appears …

Waging War Against Terror: An Essay For Sandy Levinson, Philip Bobbitt

Georgia Law Review

Wars are acts of State, and therefore there has never been a "war on terror." Of course states have fought terrorism, in many guises, for centuries. But a war on terror had to await the development of states-including virtual states like al Qaeda's global ummah 2-whose constitutional order was not confined to a particular territory or national group and for whom terror could therefore be a permanent state of international affairs, either sought in order to prevent persons within a state's control from resisting oppression by accessing global, empowering resources and networks, or suffered because other states wished to press …

The Rhetoric Of Necessity (Or, Sanford Levinson's Pinteresque Conversation), Kevin J. Heller

Georgia Law Review

It may seem odd to begin a discussion of whether the President should have the power to act extraconstitutionally in times of necessity with a quote from The Dwarfs. As I researched this Comment, though, I could not escape the uneasy feeling that I was witnessing what could only be described as a Pinteresque conversation-a conversation in which Professor Levinson and his interlocutors, "while exchanging remarks apparently on a common topic, and using mutually comprehensible vocabulary, are revealed as experiencing a profound failure to communicate with one another."2 Professor Levinson wants to find a workable balance between constitutional restraints and …

The Emancipation Proclamation And The Commander In Chief Power, Michael S. Paulsen

Georgia Law Review

Levinson, a good Socratic teacher, poses the question what is the relationship of emergency or necessity to constitutional power, constitutional rights, and constitutional interpretation generally, and surrounds it with a characteristically fascinating discussion. But while his leanings are clear, he does not clearly answer the question his discussion poses. One can certainly infer that Levinson dislikes Carl Schmitt's legal theories of emergency, which he sees as justifying Hitler's rise to power. And it certainly comes through quite clearly that Levinson feels the same way about the U.S. Department of Justice's legal analysis concerning detention and interrogation of war prisoners (which …

Small Emergencies, Kim L. Scheppele

Georgia Law Review

In this Comment, I argue that the "normal" American constitutional order can be seen as thoroughly shot through with emergency law and that this constant sense of emergency has fundamentally shaped the possibilities of American constitutionalism. America is now-and has been since the First World War-virtually always in a state of emergency, one way or another. Sometimes these states of emergency have been local, other times they have been federal, and still other times they have been international. Sometimes these states of emergency have been political; other times they have been economic or social. Sometimes these states of emergency have …

Time To Look Abroad? The Legal Regulation Of Emergency Powers, William E. Scheuerman

Georgia Law Review

The starting point for Professor Levinson's thought-provoking ruminations on emergency power and constitutionalism is his deep skepticism about the Bush Administration's legal response to 9/11.1 In the context of the "war on terror," Professor Levinson accurately recounts, the Administration has claimed the right to override both longstanding domestic and international legal commitments.2 Even strict prohibitions on torture, it seems, are not exempt from the President's constitutionally based prerogative as "Commander in Chief to keep the nation out of harm's way, and only he apparently possesses the rightful authority to determine the fate of accused terrorists. Although many constitutional lawyers will …