Even if the bombings and the shootings and yesterday’s regional lockdown have been occupying the national (and even international) media, it is important to work through some of the legal implications of these events.
Harvard CR-CL is proud to publish the first official episode of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Podcast! This first full episode features CR-CL Senior Executive Editor for Online Content Noah Kaplan and Executive Editor for Online Content Matt Giffin, and welcomes former HarvardCRCL.org election law blogger Alex Trepp to the discussion. We discuss SuperPACs, Bradley Manning, and the Tarek Mehanna trial.
The defense attorneys for Tarek Mehanna, on trial in federal court in Boston accused of providing material support for terrorism, will try to convince a jury that Mehanna is being denied his “freedom of thought and the right of private judgment,” and that in fact it was his opinions about the United States and its military involvement in the Muslim world that the prosecution seeks to punish.
After a six-year absence, the Portland, OR, police department has voted for a limited return to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (New York Times). A partnership of federal, state, and local authorities established by the Department of Justice in 2002 to coordinate anti-terrorism investigations, the JTTF includes local police departments, [...]
The Supreme Court head argument on March 2 in the case of Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, questioning whether John Ashcroft is entitled to immunity from charges that Abdullah Al-Kidd was held under the act allowing detention of material witnesses, but was treated as a suspect and was in fact never intended to be a witness in any trial. Ashcroft v. Iqbal did enough to undermine the ability of those wrongfully detained by an overzealous government to challenge their detentions, and now Ashcroft asks the court to go even further. The Court needs to take a strong stance that waving the flag of fighting terrorism is not a license to ignore the democratic freedoms government officials claim to be protecting.
Which is more terrifying: the imminent threat of an attack on American soil or a steady but intangible loss of civil liberties in the name of national security? This lesser-of-two-evils debate will take center stage in the controversial “terror trials” of Guantanamo detainees that kicked off Wednesday in New York [...]
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