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September 18, 2014|Economic Warfare, Privacy, Sanctions, SWIFT, Treasury's War

Could Sanctions Work?

by Kenneth D.M. Jensen|

Treasury’s War is an unusual book. Given the way it reads, its subtitle might well have been “A Bureaucratic Adventure Story.” Don’t roll your eyes—the genre really does exist. Government whistleblowers often put into books the story of what they did to foil policymakers (most always unsuccessfully). Most of these bureaucratic romances are about bad policies and the failure to avoid them despite the author’s sage advice. Treasury’s War is very different. Juan C. Zarate describes a bureaucratic success. That is to say, his is a tale of how bureaucrats did something new and useful by defeating the usual inertia and…

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February 24, 2014|Fourth Amendment, Liberty, Privacy, Probable Cause

Predictive Policing and Probable Cause

by Josh Blackman|

The Verge has an insightful article on how the Chicago Police Department is using predictive policing as a means to identify individuals who are likely to be involved in a violent crime–they are placed on the so-called “heat list” and monitored closely.

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January 3, 2014|anti-terrorism, FISA, Privacy

Reforming the FISA Court

by Mike Rappaport|

Here is a short article summarizing what we have learned about NSA spying in the last year. Its quite a lot. In looking at the issue, there are at least three perspectives to take. One can ask whether the spying is consistent with the Constitution’s original meaning, with the Constitution as it is interpreted to day, and with good policy. Let me here talk about the last question: good policy. I should say that I don’t have definite views on exactly how much access to information the NSA should have. I suppose it depends on how useful that access is in combatting…

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December 14, 2013|Bill Simmons, Johnny Carson, Malcolm Gladwell, Privacy, Publicness

Privacy and Publicness Over the Last Half Century

by Mike Rappaport|

One of the interesting things about our modern world is how much less privacy we have and how much more we know about one another. One need only take a look at a Facebook page or google someone to see the proof. This is especially the case for celebrities. Someone recently noted that the difference between Lebron James and Michael Jordan and other famous NBA athletes of the past is that Lebron is the first superstar to live in the social media age where every detail of his life is reported.

There is a great column on this and other issues written as an exchange of e mails between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell. I strongly recommend the whole exchange if you are interested in basketball and sports generally, but here let me just note the part that deals with how much more we know these days about celebrities.  It begins at the second entry by Gladwell and illustrates how much about celebrities of past years we didn’t know. Here is an excerpt:

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June 13, 2013|Fourth Amendment, Natural Law, Privacy, Rand Paul

The Fourth Amendment in the 21st Century

by Mike Rappaport|

Over at NRO, Andrew McCarthy criticizes Rand Paul’s new legislation that provides that:

1. The collection of citizen’s phone records is a violation of the natural rights of every man and woman in the United States, and a clear violation of the explicit language of the highest law of the land.

2. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause.

McCarthy first questions sarcastically whether people have natural rights to privacy as to their phone records (“A citizen’s “natural right” to telephone-usage records that are actually the property of third-party service providers? I wonder what Saint Augustine would have made of that.”) I am skeptical of natural rights, but putting that to the side I think McCarthy is on weak ground here. There is no reason to believe that natural rights would not apply to modern technology. That the records are the property of third party service providers is a better point. But in a world where it mattered who owned the records, perhaps people would insist on a contractual right to privacy in their records, which might change things.

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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