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
In a 6-3 decision released on June 8, the Supreme Court ruled that claims filed by individuals under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics against federal agents do not extend to Fourth Amendment claims of excessive force or First Amendment claims of retaliation.
A group of writers on the right contend that the United States has become dominated by “totalitarian” liberalism. They are wrong.
Democrats in Congress should not let their overlooking of existing federal-court authority, or their displeasure with the result in Bush v. Gore, impede the current effort at bipartisan ECA reform.
The governor of Oklahoma recently asserted the right to exempt the National Guard of his state from receiving the coronavirus vaccine, raising unique legal questions in the process.
Pre-pandemic precedents provide important—but incomplete—guidance to courts as they grapple with challenges to a rapidly rising wave of coronavirus vaccination mandates.
On June 21, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed several claims in the overlapping suits filed by Black Lives Matter, the American Civil Liberties Union and others against former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and a number of federal and local officers and agencies for the forcible clearing of protestors in Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020.
On March 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in El-Hady v. Kable upheld the constitutionality of the Terrorism Screening Database (TSDB), a watchlist maintained by the FBI that currently contains the names of more than 1 million “known or suspected terrorists.” With this ruling the Fourth Circuit joins the Sixth and Tenth Circuits, both of which have upheld the constitutionality of such terrorism watchlists in recent years.
The petitioners argue that the First Amendment gives the public the right to access FISC decisions and that redactions should only serve legitimate national security interests.
I’m not seeking damages or a judgment that what the Department of Homeland Security did was illegal, but I do want to understand who else the department reported on based on First Amendment-protected activity.
The Second Amendment doesn’t offer cover to bring a gun to the polls, nor to use one to intimidate voters.