National security and cultural heritage protection are connected in several ways. This Article explores how the real or perceived relationship between threatened cultural heritage and national security developed, how this relationship has changed U.S. foreign and cultural policy, and whether these changes are for the better or the worse from a broader policy perspective, particularly with respect to the goal of cultural heritage preservation.
This Article addresses the growing nexus between climate change and various conceptions of security with a particular emphasis on climate change’s national security impacts. This Article ultimately argues that it is far better to proactively acknowledge and address climate change’s national security impacts today rather than waiting for catastrophe to strike. Indeed, upon closer examination, climate change is not just a complex collective action environmental problem—it also is a challenging national security issue with far-reaching impacts.
This Article advances both legal and sociocultural explanations for the near absence of treason charges in the “war on terror” and the implications for addressing political violence. On the legal side, terrorism charges have replaced treason because they enable the government to do almost everything that it once sought to accomplish with treason charges: they impose extraordinary stigma, they reach speech and advocacy, and they trigger severe penalties. At the same time, terrorism charges face fewer limits than treason charges: they criminalize conduct far removed from actual plots, they require a lesser showing of intent, and they dispense with treason’s constitutionally imposed evidentiary restriction. This Article argues that reimagining national security requires vigilance regarding the shape-shifting nature of responses to political violence.
This Article considers the national security implications of the legal vacuum concerning modern enhancements of data mining. Its key insight is to distinguish big data as an emergent entity from the countless events that constitute collectable information. The distinction allows us to think separately about the property entitlements and regulatory constraints attributable to the elements and the systems. This analytical step in turn clarifies which legal approaches may advance national security interests consistent with other values and commitments.
This Comment argues that foreign investment in domestic sporting institutions presents a novel, legitimate threat justifying executive attention. This Comment posits that sports are not simply a form of entertainment and instead cultivate a uniquely salient form of identity for the individuals and communities that comprise their fandoms. And when the sports investor is a foreign government or their proxy, such ownership may present a particularly potent threat to national security. Incorporating these theoretical considerations, this Comment seeks to present an actionable analytical framework for CFIUS, reviewing courts, and policy makers to consider and evaluate the potential threats to national security posed by “sportswashing”: foreign direct investment in domestic sporting institutions, through which foreign state or near-state actors leverage the popularity of sports and communities of sports fans to cultivate political and economic capital.
A noncitizen detained under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) may be detained indefinitely until her removal order is finalized. Detainees have challenged prolonged detention following a detainee’s bond hearing on Fourteenth Amendment Due Process grounds, leading to a circuit split. Courts generally apply the Mathews test when hearing these challenges, which requires balancing the individual’s liberty at stake against the government’s interest in limiting that liberty. This Comment argues that a more complete evaluation of national security implications under the clear and convincing evidence standard will more accurately capture the full scope of proffered government interests and reduce the extreme deference given to the executive branch in its national security determinations.
In 2024, President Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), which required TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok to a company in a “non-adversarial” country or be banned from the United States. TikTok challenged the regulation, in part, as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which would permit the government to ban TikTok so long as it compensates ByteDance. Because PAFACA applies to applications beyond TikTok, it raises a broader question: does the Takings Clause require government compensation for bans on foreign web services? This Comment argues the answer is no.
The 2023 Supreme Court case Twitter v. Taamneh found that defendant social media companies were not liable for aiding and abetting a terrorist attack overseas. The Court alluded to the existence of an alternative set of facts that might alter their analysis or produce a different outcome. This Comment explores those “other contexts” and seeks to identify what factors could produce a successful Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) aiding and abetting claim against a social media company for an act of terrorism overseas. Ultimately, this Comment concludes that it would take an extraordinary set of facts to find social media companies secondarily liable for an act of terrorism. This Comment then suggests other avenues to encourage social media companies to heighten their detection of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) activity and prevent future attacks.
