The Lawfare Podcast

From July 28, 2020: For a while, there have been large numbers of alleged former Islamic State state fighters and affiliates detained by the Iraqi government and by autonomous authorities in Syria. The fate of these detainees—and the more than 60,000 people in refugee affiliated with the men who live in refugee camps in the region—remains a pressing national security issue for countries in the region, as well as the United States and its Western allies. To talk about the situation, Jacob Schulz spoke with Bobby Chesney, Lawfare co-founder and professor of law at the University of Texas; Vera Mironova, a research fellow at Harvard and, among other things, author of a recent Lawfare post on trials of Islamic State fighters in Iraq; and Leah West, a lecturer at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and a fellow at the McCain Institute. They talked about how the trials have gone in Iraq and Syria; how the U.S., Canada and European countries have responded to the situation; and what lessons can be drawn from U.S. experiences with post-9/11 detention and trials of suspected terrorists.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From January 30, 2016: Last week at The Brookings Institution, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer participated in a discussion with Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes and Newsweek’s Dahlia Lithwick about his new book, "The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities." During their conversation, Justice Breyer provides an overview of how in a globalizing world, the steady operation of American laws depends more on the cooperation of other jurisdictions than at any other time. He also examines how the Court's decisions regarding presidential power in national security have evolved throughout American history, and weighs how the Court can balance national security objectives in an increasingly connected world.Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution, introduced Justice Breyer and the panel.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Late last week and early this week saw fighting between Islamic State fighters and Syrian democratic forces after the Islamic State attempted a jailbreak of a Kurdish prison containing significant numbers of alleged Islamic State fighters. The makeshift jail housed Syrians, Iraqis, and also alleged fighters from Western Europe and North Africa. It's the most significant jailbreak since ISIS’s territorial defeat—and a major national security story that's gone under the radar.To talk it all through and to think about the scale of the damage and all of the things that led to this point, Jacob Schulz talked with Leah West, assistant professor of international affairs at Carleton University, and Louisa Loveluck, the Baghdad bureau chief at the Washington Post. They broke down what's happened so far and what to make of it all. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we’ve discussed on the show, online advertisements are the shifting, unstable sand on which the contemporary internet is built. And one of the many, many ways in which the online ad ecosystem is confusing and opaque involves how advertisers can find their ads popping up alongside content they’d rather not be associated with—and, all too often, not having any idea how that happened.This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin of the Check My Ads Institute. Their goal is to serve as a watchdog for the ad industry, and they’ve just started a campaign to let companies know—and call them out—when their ads are showing up next to content published by far-right figures like Steve Bannon who supported the Jan. 6 insurrection. So what is it about the ads industry that makes things so opaque, even for the companies paying to have their ads appear online? What techniques do Claire and Nandini use to trace ad distribution? And how do advertisers usually respond when Check My Ads alerts them that they’re funding “brand unsafe” content?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if we declared an end to the costly system of how we classify national security information in the United States? Oona Hathaway, the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, poses this question in her article “Secrecy’s End.” Stephanie Pell talked with Oona about some of our classification system’s most corrosive effects on our democratic system of governance and some proposals she has for reforming it. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last year, our national dialogue about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack has become ever more focused on politics, congressional investigations and criminal prosecutions. But what about the people who were actually on the front lines on Jan. 6?Natalie Orpett sat down with Susan Dominus and Luke Broadwater, who recently published an article in The New York Times Magazine called, “The Capitol Police and the Scars of Jan. 6.” The article tells the stories of some of the law enforcement officers who were there that day, many of whom continue to experience the impact of Jan. 6 in profoundly personal ways. They talked about what they learned through their reporting and what it means for ongoing efforts to respond to the attack.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the prospect of broader election reform has grown more remote, bipartisan discussions have increasingly come to center on one long standing law: the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Designed to regulate the process through which Congress counts electoral votes, ambiguities in this antiquated law have been a frequent source of anxiety, most recently in the wake of the 2020 election, when many feared outgoing President Trump would successfully capitalize on them to prevent the certification of his loss. To discuss the Electoral Count Act and its potential reform, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Ned Foley, a professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and a leading expert in election law. They discussed the ordinance of the act, a recent congressional report outlining possible reforms and what limits the Constitution may put on what reform can accomplish. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 4, 2015: With a tenuous ceasefire holding in Ukraine, we asked Fiona Hill onto the show to discuss the man behind the unrest: Vladimir Putin. Hill is the co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. On the Lawfare Podcast, she tackles the hard questions about Putin. Who exactly is he? What does he want? Is he an unhinged madman obsessed with personal appearances or a shrewd realist with a nuanced understanding of the geopolitical challenges his country faces? And how should the West respond to Russian aggression based on what we know about its leader?It's an important look at an often caricatured but rarely understood man.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From August 6, 2019: Over the years, presidents have used different language to describe the withholding of information from Congress. To discuss the concept of "executive privilege," Margaret Taylor sat down with Mark Rozell, the Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and the author of "Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability," which chronicles the history of executive privilege in its many forms since the founding of the United States. They talked about what executive privilege is, what is new in the Trump administration's handling of congressional demands for information, and what it all means for the separation of powers in our constitutional democracy.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case Trump v. Thompson, denying Donald Trump's motion to block the National Archives from producing his documents to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. To drill down, Natalie Orpett talked with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Professor Jonathan Shaub of the University of Kentucky College of Law. They discussed the dispute between Trump and the committee, the central issue of executive privilege and what it all means for the committee’s investigation.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.