Too often, national security and personal liberties are portrayed as inversely related. This is simplistic, and also clearly wrong. After all, in the absence of security, it would be impossible to enjoy our freedoms at all. Nevertheless, some of the hardest national security choices are inevitably those that involve tradeoffs with civil liberties. The need to gather information on our enemies rubs up against expectations of privacy. The eroding line between war and law enforcement endangers principles of due process. And the need to keep secrets increasingly leads to tension with a robust free press.
Latest in Civil Liberties and Constitutional Rights
Charlottesville demonstrates that Trump is uniquely unwilling to honor and uphold the core conception of full equality for all citizens under the Constitution and the law.
Even if the president makes good on his tweets and directs Secretary Mattis to revise departmental policy to ban transgender service-members, he may not succeed in the courts.
On Tuesday, a civil action was filed by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute and seven blocked Twitter users, asserting that President Trump and his staff are violating the First Amendment by blocking users on Twitter based on their viewpoints.
The Supreme Court's decision to vacate and remand the cross-border shooting case to the Fifth Circuit avoided the Fourth Amendment question at issue and focused instead on the availability of a Bivens remedy.
On Monday, the New York Police Department agreed to a revised class action settlement that it hopes will put to rest litigation surrounding the Department’s surveillance of Muslims.
The Department of Justice has released the Office of Legal Counsel memo assessing the legality of President Trump's executive order banning entry into the United States by refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.
A roundup of Just Security's recent coverage of Trump's executive order on immigration.
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates has announced in a letter to Department of Justice staff that the Department will not be enforcing President Trump's executive order excluding immigrants and refugees from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from the United States.
The letter is included below and is also available here.
A roundup of the documents in ongoing litigation related to Trump's executive order banning entry into the United States by immigrants and refugees from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen is facing legal challenges in a number of federal jurisdictions.
A summary of Donald Trump's executive order instituting a suspension of entry to the U.S. and issuances of visas for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen (earlier designated as “areas of concern” under the 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act).