Earlier this week I analyzed Senator Paul’s proposed war declaration.  Bruce Fein has a spirited defense of Senator Paul’s draft (which includes a swipe at me for asking an “obtuse[e]” question).  But th...

If you peruse the darker corners of the U.S. criminal code---as I used to do in my youthful efforts to educate myself in law without going to law school---you'll eventually stumble across 18 U.S.C. § 708...

The intelligence community has no set of general principles for judging the privacy impact of their programs.  Some privacy scholars believe that the Fair Information Protection Principles (FIPPs) serve ...

The Government Performance Results Act (GPRA) requires the Executive Branch to conduct detailed strategic planning prior to spending money. The laws that govern the President when he introduces the men ...

Senator Paul has proposed a declaration of war and authorization of force against the Islamic State.  A few reflections, drawn in part from an article I wrote a decade ago with Curtis Bradley: 1.

I’ve been wrestling with an idea on electronic surveillance reform, and when I recently consulted with Benjamin Wittes about it, he encouraged me to post here and seek the feedback of Lawfare’s readershi...

As a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform and director of Roger Williams Law School’s Immigration Clinic, I know the high stakes in the current debate about President Obama’s executive action. I...

Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt report: President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures A...

The Senate yesterday buried---at least for now---surveillance reform, when Republican senators refused to allow the current draft of the measure to proceed to a vote. Glenn Greenwald has an interesting r...

[Cross-posted at Just Security] The three of us have coauthored an Op-Ed in Sunday’s Washington Post on the topic of congressional authorization for the use of force against ISIL and the 2001 AUMF.  We ...

Midday yesterday, I ran into a prominent national security reporter on the street near Brookings. The conversation quickly turned, as conversations tend to turn in our circles in Washington these days, t...