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
On Sept. 4, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a decision in Elhady v. Kable—a case that challenges how the federal government manages the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), colloquially known as the “watchlist.”
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the federal government's Terrorist Screening Database program, commonly referred to as the terrorist "watchlist," does not provide "constitutionally adequate" process for Americans included in the database. The Court instructed both sides to submit briefs about what they each view as the appropriate relief. The ruling can be found here.
Conventional wisdom and many lower court cases hold that foreign states are not entitled to constitutionally based personal jurisdiction protections in federal courts because they are not “persons” protected by the Fifth Amendment. That reasoning is incorrect.
Joel, who has served as the civil liberties protection officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for 14 years, is stepping down.
The Ninth Circuit says the transgender service ban is subject to heightened scrutiny, vacates the district court’s orders upholding the preliminary injunction and compelling discovery, and remands for reconsideration.
But the lack of tailoring—the careful fitting of means to chosen ends—in the military’s transgender policy should prompt the courts to look more closely at the Trump administration’s rescissions of various measures followed or implemented by the Obama administration.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a stay of the preliminary injunction in Stone v. Trump, removing, in the government’s view, the sole remaining obstacle to implementation of the ban on transgender service members.
Several legal aid organizations filed a class-action lawsuit on Feb. 12 in New York challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement practice of denying in-person hearings to immigrants.
Muthana and Begum left their home countries to join the Islamic State and now are seeking to return—but neither the U.S. nor the U.K. will allow them back.
On Feb. 22, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas ruled that the male-only Selective Service System (SSS) violates Fifth Amendment Equal Protection principles.