The Week that Was: All of Lawfare in One Post
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Alan Rozenshtein and Benjamin Wittes introduced Lawfare’s newest paper series entitled, “The Digital Social Contract.” In the first installment in the series, Kyle Langvardt suggested how the First Amendment should apply to content moderation laws for social media platforms.
Jen Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast featuring a conversation between Alan Rozenshtein and Kyle Langvardt on Digital Social Contract paper, entitled “Platform Governance and the First Amendment: A User-Centered Approach”:
Howell also shared the latest edition of the Lawfare Podcast’s "Arbiters of Truth" series on disinformation, featuring an interview with Claire Wardle, the co-founder and leader of the nonprofit organization First Draft and a research fellow at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center, about online misinformation about COVID-19:
Bobby Chesney explained what the Cyber Solarium Commission’s recommendation for a new National Cyber Director position could look like in practice.
Chesney and Steve Vladeck shared an episode of the National Security Law Podcast in which they debated the latest Supreme Court rulings, as well as whether the president can compel Pfizer to prioritize the U.S. for vaccine doses:
Jeremy Gordon detailed the legal regime governing document preservation during a presidential transition.
Jack Goldsmith argued that the news about federal investigations of Hunter Biden highlights a concerning and ever-growing spate of cross-party investigations into political officials that will continue to have repercussions in the future.
Howell shared an episode of Rational Security in which Benjamin Wittes, Tamara Cofman Wittes, Susan Hennessey and Shane Harris talked about the latest news in the 2020 transition:
Howell also shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast featuring an interview with Brookings senior fellow Mike O'Hanlon and Kori Schake, the head of defense and foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute, on why people are upset about President-elect Biden’s nomination of retired four-star Army general Lloyd J. Austin for Defense Secretary:
Rohini Kurup shared District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order dismissing Michael Flynn’s case as moot.
Kurup also shared the U.S. Army’s Dec. 8 report condemning the culture and command climate at the Fort Hood military base in Texas.
Jim Eisenmann argued that by creating a new type of federal position, Schedule F, President Trump has empowered federal agencies to move scores of career federal employees into positions that would eliminate their current job protections—and shift political employees into career roles.
Carrie Cordero and Katrina Mulligan explored how the U.S. can modernize the Department of Homeland Security.
Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Jack Goldsmith interviewed Adam Cox and Christina Rodriguez, authors of a new book entitled, “The President and Immigration Law,” about the various ways in which Congress has delegated power to the immigration system:
Goldsmith, Curtis Bradley and Oona Hathaway argued that there are serious flaws in Congress’s ability to ensure accountability about executive agreements.
Daniel Byman reflected on the New Zealand government’s report on what went wrong leading up to Christchurch terrorist attacks. Anna Salvatore shared the report, which examines the New Zealand goverment’s failure to prevent a white supremacist shooting of 51 worshippers in two Christchurch mosques in March 2019.
Shayan Karbassi discussed the future of NATO after the Trump administration.
Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast on the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, featuring a conversation with law professors and international and U.S. foreign relations law experts Chimène Keitner and Ingrid Wuerth:
Eleanor Runde explained the ongoing lawsuits against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in D.C. District Court.
Tia Sewell shared a livestream of the Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Committee’s hearing on the invalidation of the EU-U.S. privacy shield and the future of transatlantic data flows.
Michael Garcia and Mieke Eoyang gave the U.S. government a roadmap for addressing cybercrime.
Eve Gaumond assessed the capacity of Canadian law to shield the country’s electoral system from disinformation and found that while Canada may appear to be better off than the United States, it's not clear how much that has to do with its different free speech tradition.
Lester Munson shared an episode of the Fault Lines podcast featuring a conversation with Megan Brown, a senior fellow at NSI, about her forthcoming paper on the U.S.’s role in setting global technical standards for 5G networks:
Michael Warner reflected on U.S. Cyber Command’s first decade in the latest installment of Lawfare’s Aegis paper series with the Hoover Institution.
Deniz Yuksel argued that Silicon Valley should not let the Turkish government censor its citizens on social media platforms.
Ian J. Lynch argued that imposing CAATSA sanctions on Turkey would be counterproductive to American interests—rather, the U.S. should construct a broader strategy to address fractured U.S.-Turkey relations.
Stewart Baker shared an episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast featuring an interview with Tim Hwang, a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, about the complexities of the tech industry, among other things:
Susan Landau analyzed a recent report showing that law enforcement officials are successfully breaking through encryption barriers to access locked devices.
Jordan Schneider shared an episode of the ChinaTalk podcast in which he interviewed Xiaowei Wang about her new book on technology in China’s countryside:
Abby Lemert and Eleanor Runde dissected the latest U.S.-China technology policy and national security news in this newest edition of "SinoTech."
Tia Sewell shared the livestream of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on U.S. policy in Syria.
And Bryce Klehm shared the link to this Thursday’s episode of Lawfare Live in which Suzanne Maloney, the vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, and Lawfare senior editor Scott Anderson joined Benjamin Wittes to answer questions from the Lawfare community about the challenges facing U.S.-Iranian relations during the transition period and beyond:
And that was the week that was.