Yemen: Is the U.S. Breaking the Law?
On Friday, April 13, the Center for Global Legal Challenges hosted a half-day conference on the legality of U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The conference brought together legal scholars and practitioners to discuss the implications of U.S. support under both domestic and international law. Leading up to the conference, Moderator Professor Oona Hathaway and several Yale Law School students addressed this topic in a series of articles published on the U.S. national security blog Just Security.
The first panel, which can be seen here, focused on domestic law, including the War Powers Resolution, the Arms Export Control Act, and the federal aider and abettor statute as applied to the War Crimes Act. Neil Eggleston (Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School; Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP; former White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, 2011-2014), Robert M. Chesney (Charles I. Francis Professor in Law, University of Texas School of Law), and Ryan Goodman (Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law, New York University School of Law) sat on the panel. Neil Eggleston reflected on the decision-making process under President Obama, particularly the reliance on the Office of Legal Counsel’s 2011 Libya Opinion, which detailed the President’s legal authority to conduct military operations. Both Neil Eggleston and Robert Chesney were pessimistic that the War Powers Resolution would restrain U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition, given the limited extent of support to date. Chesney concluded instead that Congress would more likely affect policy by placing restrictions on funding. Ryan Goodman focused his remarks on the War Crimes Act and argued that it is unlikely U.S. government personnel will be held liable for aiding and abetting violations under the War Crimes Act.
The second panel, which can be seen here, focused on international law, including international humanitarian law, human rights law, and the Draft Articles of State Responsibility. Avril Haines, (Senior Fellow, Human Rights Institute and National Security Program, Columbia Law School; former Deputy National Security Adviser and Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency), Nathalie Weizmann (Senior Legal Officer, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), Brian Finucane (Attorney-Adviser for Political-Military Affairs, U.S. Department of State), and Kristine Beckerle (Yemen and UAE Researcher, Human Rights Watch) joined the panel. Nathalie Weizmann discussed the state obligation to facilitate access to humanitarian assistance in Yemen. Kristine Beckerle shared insights from her investigations of the Saudi-led coalition’s alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Brian Finucane suggested that post-hoc analysis is not sufficient to assess the legality of targeted strikes and argued that aiding and abetting liability under international law should only adhere where a country provides support for a partner who has either a practice or policy of committing violations of international law. Last, Avril Haines spoke about the challenges of separating law and policy when evaluating challenging issues like the conflict in Yemen.
The Future of the Paris Climate Regime - A Discussion with Todd Stern, former Special Envoy for Climate Change
On Tuesday, April 10, the Center for Global Legal Challenges and the School of Forestry hosted Todd Stern for a discussion of the future of the Paris Climate agreement. Professor Harold Koh delivered opening remarks, emphasizing that Stern’s role in shaping climate policy during the Obama administration cannot be overstated. Stern served from January 2009 until April 2016 as the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the State Department, leading the U.S. effort in negotiating the Paris Agreement and in all climate negotiations in the seven years leading up to Paris. Stern spoke about the key challenges facing international climate agreements and fielded questions from students about efforts to secure the Paris agreement in a hostile political environment.
Yale Cyber Leadershi
p Forum
Bridging The Divide: The Law, Technology, And Business Of Cyber Security
The second iteration of the Yale Cyber Leadership Forum was held in New Haven on April 7 and 8 in collaboration with the Yale Office of International Affair and McKinsey & Company. The Forum brought together an array of attorneys, technologists, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, academics, and students to discuss the most pressing cybersecurity challenges facing the United States. It included technology demonstrations, with simulations of man-in-the-middle and social engineering attacks, and an interactive demo by of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit. The Forum also featured presentations on managing cyber risks, encryption as a tool for improving security, cybercrime and private-sector law enforcement cooperation, the international legal framework for cyberspace, lessons learned by a CIO of a major financial services company, emerging technologies and cyber solutions, and the future of cyberspace. In addition, participants engaged with Professor Susan Landau on her recent book “Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age” (Yale University Press) addressing the tensions between law enforcement and cryptographers. The Cyber Forum also provided an opportunity for participants to confer in problem-solving small groups sessions on four topics: (1) Valuing and Managing the Risk of Cyberattack in the Private Sector; (2) The Internet of Things: Dangers and Opportunities; (3) What the International Legal Framework Means for Private Companies; and (4) Making Sense of the “Going Dark” Debate: Cybercrime, Surveillance, and Private Sector Law Enforcement Cooperation. For more information on the Cyber Forum, see cyber.forum.yale.edu.
Lunch Debate on Regulating Autonomous Weapons with Gen. Dunlap and Dr. Crootof
On Tuesday, April 3, the Center for Global Legal Challenges, along with the Information Society Project, hosted a lunch debate on the regulation of autonomous weapons. Killer robots are no longer a distant future prospect. Autonomous defensive and offensive
systems are already being used and developed by the United States, South Korea, Russia, Germany, and Israel, among others. But how should this new technology be regulated? Moderator Professor Scott J. Shapiro began the debate with the proposition: The existing legal framework is sufficient to address autonomous weapons systems.
Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF (Ret.) argued for the sufficiency of the existing legal regimes. While it is important to develop new legal norms and strengthen legal review of weapons deployment and use, Gen. Dunlap cautioned against creating detailed laws specific to autonomous weapons, especially if coupled with a complete abandonment of existing principles in humanitarian law. Dr. Rebecca Crootof recalled that the laws of armed conflict developed to regulate human combatants, and therefore many analogies between autonomous weapon systems and humans prove problematic, as, for example, the former cannot be trained in the traditional sense and are not flexible in their application of instructions. Dr. Crootof also pointed to several areas in international law that would need to be augmented with new laws to meet emerging challenges posed by new technologies, such as the doctrines of state accountability and command responsibility. Both agreed that an outright ban on autonomous weapons would not work, and both expressed particularized concern regarding the legal difficulties posed by machine learning and neural networks.
Maj Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., USAF (Ret.), the former deputy judge advocate general of the United States Air Force, joined the Duke Law faculty in July 2010 where he is a professor of the practice of law and Executive Director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. He holds an undergraduate degree from St. Joseph’s University, and a law degree from Villanova University School of Law. He is also a Distinguished Graduate of the (US) National War College. During his 34-year military career, he served at various posts in the U.S., as well as in Korea and the U.K. Among other assignments, he served as the Staff Judge Advocate for Air Combat Command, U.S. Strategic Command, and as the deputy staff judge advocate for U.S. Central Command. He has deployed for operations in the Middle East and Africa. A prolific author and accomplished public speaker, Dunlap’s commentary on a wide variety of national security topics has been published in leading newspapers, blogs, military journals, and law reviews. His blog is LAWFIRE http://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/.
Rebecca Crootof is the Executive Director of the Information Society Project and a Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. Her primary areas of research include torts, international law, and technology law, and her work explores questions stemming from the iterative relationship between law and technology, often in light of changes sparked by increasingly autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, cyberspace, robotics, and the Internet of Things. Crootof earned a B.A. cum laude in English with a minor in Mathematics at Pomona College; a J.D. at Yale Law School; and a PhD in law at Yale Law School. She also served as a law clerk for Judge Mark R. Kravitz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and for Judge John M. Walker, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Conversation with Tess Bridgeman About U.S. Military Operations in Syria: How did we get there and how long can we stay? Moderated by Prof. Neil Eggleston
On Thursday, March 29,the Centerfor Global Legal Challenges, the National Security Group, Outlaws, and Yale Law Women hosted a conversation with Tess Bridgeman about the conflict in Syria. The lunch talk was moderated by Professor Neil Eggleston.
Tess Bridgeman served as Special Assistant to President Obama, Associate Counsel to the President, and Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC), where she covered the full range of issues relating to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. While there, among other Administration priorities, she worked on the negotiation, implementation, and oversight of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), Middle East policy, Cuba policy, U.S. foreign assistance programs, use of force and counterterrorism policy, intelligence matters, international economic policy and foreign investment, sanctions programs (including relating to Russia, Iran, and North Korea), and negotiation and interpretation of international agreements. Bridgeman previously served in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser, where she was Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser. Prior to that role, she served as an Attorney Adviser in the Office of Political-Military Affairs, focusing on armed conflict, detention issues, and the intersection of the law of armed conflict and human rights law.
A Rhodes Scholar, Truman Scholar, and Gardner Fellow, Bridgeman has a D.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, where she focused on global governance and international institutions; a J.D. from NYU Law School, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, which she attended as a Root-Tilden-Kern and Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar; and a B.A. with University Distinction and Departmental Honors from Stanford University.
Contemporary Issu es in Space Law: Lunch Talk with NASA General Counsel
On Tuesday, March 27, the Center for Global Legal Challenges (GLC) along with the Yale Society of International Law (YSIL) hosted Steven A. Mirmina, senior attorney in the International Law division of the Office of General Counsel at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. Professor Mirmina has worked as an attorney at NASA since 1999, and he has helped negotiate and conclude more than 1,000 international agreements for missions across all NASA Mission Directorates, including activities ranging from human space flight and Mars exploration, to Earth science missions and aeronautics research. Professor Mirmina has spoken widely and authored numerous articles in the fields of international air and space law. He has received awards from both NASA and the White House for exceptional and distinguished service to the government.
At the lunch event, Professor Mirmina first provided an overview of the current field of space law, both at the international and domestic levels. He then delved into contemporary issues and posed normative questions on how space law should develop to address a whole slew of topics from increased nongovernment access and liability for space junk, to exploitation of extraterrestrial resources and space tourism. Professor Mirmina concluded with information on potential careers in space law before fielding questions from a packed room of law and other graduate students.
Lunch Talk with David Kris, 
Former Assistant Attorney General for National Security Division of the Department of Justice
On Tuesday, March 20 the Center for Global Legal Challenges hosted a lunch talk with David Kris, former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division of the DOJ. Kris discussed the Russia investigation, the Nunes memo and reply, and the state of U.S. national security. He talked about various Russian active measures and the tools that U.S. policymakers have to combat the threats. David Kris ran the National Security Division during the early years of the Obama Administration and is an expert on FISA. An authority on U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance, Kris is co-author of the leading treatise in the field, National Security Investigations and Prosecutions, as well as the author of several other articles and blog posts. He is a member of the board of directors and a Contributing Editor of the Lawfareblog, adjunct professor at the University of Washington Law School, and a University Affiliate at Georgetown University. Kris is the recipient of numerous awards and medals, including the National Intelligence Superior Service Medal, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service, the CIA Agency Seal Medal, the Department of Justice Edmund J. Randolph Award, and on two occasions the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the Department of Justice’s highest honor. He is a 1988 graduate of Haverford College and a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School, and a former law clerk to Judge Stephen S. Trott of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
General Principles of Law and International Due Process
On March 6th, the Center for Global Legal Challenges hosted a book talk by Luke Sobota, one of the founding partners of Three Crowns, a boutique international dispute resolution firm. Sobota discussed his recently published monograph, General Principles of Law and International Due Process (Oxford University Press). In a wide-ranging discussion, Sobota addressed the distinction between general principles and other sources of international law (particularly customary international law) and the inadequate attention that has been paid to general principles by scholars of international law since Bin Cheng’s seminal 1953 treatise on the subject. Both in the book and in his talk, Sobota drew upon examples from his dispute resolution practice, which cuts across investor-state, inter-state, and commercial arbitrations.
Before moving to private practice, Sobota previously worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he advised and prepared formal legal opinions for executive branch officials on a range of constitutional, international, and administrative law issues. Sobota teaches a course on investment disputes at American University and a course on the forensics of international arbitration at the University of Miami, and is co-director of the International Arbitration Workshop at Harvard Law School. He earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, after which he clerked for the late Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, William H. Rehnquist.
A Conversation about National Security with Jeh Johnson, Former Secretary of Homeland Security"
On Wednesday, February 28 the Center for Global Legal Challenges hosted a lunch talk with Secretary Jeh Johnson where he discussed navigating national security challenges in the Trump era. The discussion drew on lessons learned during his time in DHS and DoD where he dealt with a wide array of issues ranging from counterterrorism, responses to national disasters, border security, immigration, and cybersecurity. The event was moderated by Professor Oona Hathaway.
Jeh Johnson is the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security (2013-2017). He is now in private law practice at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP, based in New York and Washington. Johnson has been affiliated with Paul, Weiss on and off since 1984, and became the firm’s first African American partner in 1994. Johnson is also currently on the board of directors of PG&E Corporation in San Francisco. As Secretary of Homeland Security, Johnson was the head of the third largest cabinet department of the U.S. government, consisting of 230,000 personnel and 22 components. Prior to becoming Secretary of Homeland Security, Johnson was General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2009-2012) and General Counsel of the Department of the Air Force (1998-2001). Earlier in his career, Johnson was also an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (1989-1991). Johnson is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a graduate of Morehouse College (1979) and Columbia Law School (1982), and the recipient of nine honorary degrees.
"Lunch Talk With Amba
ssador DiCarlo about the Role of Women in Foreign Policy and Diplomacy"
On Monday, February 26, 2018, the Center for Global Legal Challenges, Yale Law Women, and the Yale Society of International Law hosted a conversation with Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo where she discussed the role of women in diplomacy and foreign policy.
Ambassador Rosemary A. DiCarlo is currently a Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and the president of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a nonprofit organization that conducts educational programs and Track II diplomatic initiatives regarding security challenges facing the United States. Prior to this position, she was a career foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State. She served as U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations and U.S. Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs to the United Nations, during which she handled issues that came before the U.N. Security Council. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, she covered issues related to the Western Balkans. She also held the position of U.S. Coordinator for the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe at the Department of State. Ambassador DiCarlo served as Director for United Nations Affairs at the National Security Council; Director, Washington Office of the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations; Director for Democratic Initiatives for the New Independent States at the Department of State; and Coordinator for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. Her overseas assignments included tours in Moscow and Oslo.
Before joining the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador DiCarlo was a member of the Secretariat of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University and speaks Russian and French. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Women’s Foreign Policy Group and Women in International Security, and serves as a Trustee of International House, New York City, and on the Advisory Board of Global Cities, a Bloomberg philanthropy.
Separation of Powers in the Trump Era
On Tuesday, February 13, the Center for Global Legal Challenges hosted Professor Richard H. Pildes to discuss separation of powers in the Trump era. He reflected on his 2006 article, "Separation of Parties, not Powers," in which he and Professor Daryl Levinson reenvisioned the law and theory of separation of powers by viewing it through the lens of competition between the political parties. In particular, their article critiqued basic assumptions about separation-of-powers doctrines, arguing that inter-branch competition often disappears when the White House and Congress are controlled by the same party.
Professor Pildes discussed how this dynamic is at play as the GOP-controlled Congress attempts to govern alongside—and investigate—President Trump. Because the political fate of Republican members of Congress is tied to that of the president, Professor Pildes predicts that they will generally avoid challenging the administration until Trump becomes significantly less popular. Professor Pildes also discussed how reforms to bolster the rights of the minority party in Congress—a feature of some European parliaments—would strengthen the separation of powers during periods of unified government.
Professor Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU Law School, and is currently the Maurice R. Greenberg Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was joined in conversation by Professor Oona Hathaway. The event was co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society.
Litigating Data Sovereignty – Andrew Keane Woods
On January 30 2018, Andrew Kene Woods today's most important Internet governance issues—including which nations get to determine how Internet services operate globally—are being settled in court. These cases require courts to identify foreign sovereign interests, weigh them against domestic interests, and defer to foreign sovereigns where appropriate. These cases presents courts with a similar set of jurisdictional line-drawing questions: What is the scope of sovereign authority over the cloud? Are extraterritorial exercises of jurisdiction lawful? How much deference is owed to foreign sovereign interests in regulating Internet activity, and how to weigh competing claims of sovereign authority?
To answer these questions, we have to look at a subset of foreign affairs law known as the sovereign-deference doctrines. Sovereign-deference arguments now pervade a number of consequential cases, including Google’s challenge to the “right to be forgotten” in Europe and Microsoft’s ongoing challenge to a court order to produce foreign-held emails under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and they will play a significan
t role in future cases. But foreign affairs law’s proper application to cross-border Internet disputes is not what many litigants and courts have claimed. Professor Woods argues that no sovereign-deference doctrine prohibits global takedown requests, foreign production orders, or other forms of extraterritorial exercises of jurisdiction over the Internet. To the contrary, one of the key lessons of the sovereign-deference jurisprudence is that in order to avoid tensions between sovereigns, courts often enable, rather than retard, extraterritorial exercises of authority. The implication is that at times, extraterritorial exercises of authority are appropriate, contrary to what a number of courts and litigants in high-profile Internet disputes have argued.
Professor Andrew Woods is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, and starting July 1, 2018, an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona College of Law.
The talk was co-sponsored with the Information Society Project.
The Political Economy of Killer Robots: Rethinking the Supply and Distribution of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems with Frank Pasquale (YLS ’01)
On January 23, 2018, Professor Frank Pasquale gave a talk at Yale Law
School on how the development and distribution of lethal autonomous weapons systems is affected by political economy principles of supply and distribution. The debate on lethal autonomous weapons systems has taken on a familiar structure – abolitionists call for a ban, realists reject that approach, and reformers occupy a middle ground by proposing regulation short of an outright ban. Reformers acknowledge that some types of weapons systems are so dangerous that they should never be built. Abolitionists concede that some defensive uses of automation (particularly in cyberwarfare) are necessary for national security.
However, while the debate on regulating lethal autonomous weapons systems is desperately needed for the protection of human life and society at large, the work of abolitionists and reformers could be unraveled by arms race dynamics that realists both recognize and promote. Not just the design, but also the ubiquity, of lethal autonomous weapons systems matters—and their prevalence hinges on the expense of lethal robots’ components (including sensors, actuators, processors, and explosives), maintenance, and deployment. Value-neutral economic analysis risks promoting the proliferation of not only services and goods, but also “bads,” thanks to its focus on market procedures and efficiency. By contrast, a political-economic approach starts with questions of distribution and a substantive vision of what a just social order entails. It complements both abolitionist and reformist approaches to lethal autonomous weapons systems by bringing questions of resource allocation to the center of arms control policy.
Frank Pasquale is a Professor of Law at the University of Maryland. He is the author of The Black Box Society (Harvard University Press, 2015). Currently, Pasquale works on a book tentatively titled Laws of Robotics: Revitalizing Professions in an Era of Automation (under contract to Harvard University Press).
The talk was co-sponsored with the Information Society Project and the National Security Group.
Woman and Foreign Policy Lecture Series - Gender Integration—and the Road Ahead with Jennifer Klein and Rachel Vogelstein
During the Fall 2017 semester, the Center for Global Legal Studies hosted Jennifer Klein and Rachel Vogelstein as Visiting Fellows for a three-part lecture series. Drawing on their extensive policy experience working in the Obama Administration and for Hilary Clinton's Presidential Campaign, Jennifer Klein and Rachel Vogelstein presented evidence demonstrating that the advancement of the global status of women and girls remains critical to U.S. foreign policy interests. The lectures addressed gender and economic growth, peace and security, political participation, health and education, violence and human rights, and international institutions and treaties. An inaugural class of Women and Foreign Policy Fellows (consisting of fourteen Yale Law students) attended the three-part lecture series and participated in a deeper exploration of the themes with Jennifer and Rachel in a small seminar following each lecture.
A Conversation About the Future of the Islamic State Without a State & The Future of IraqWith Former Counter-ISIL Military Commander LTG Sean MacFarland
Moderated by Emma Sky
LTG Sean MacFarland and Emma Sky drew on their extensive experiences with the United States military in Iraq to discuss the lessons the military learned in the fight against ISIL as well as what to expect from the recently collapsed ISIL "caliphate." This discussion explored the prospects for the future of Iraq given the unique security challenges it faces. LTG MacFarland was the top American commander in the U.S.-led coalition to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria from September 2015 to August 2016. He is also the former commander of III Corps and Fort Hood and is currently serving as the Deputy Commanding General of the U.S. Army's Training & Doctrine Command, which is tasked with overseeing all of the training of the Army's forces and the development of operational doctrine. LTG MacFarland was named one of Time's100 Most Influential People in 2016 and is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Emma Sky previously served as advisor to the Commanding General of US Forces, General Ray Odierno, in Iraq from 2007 to 2010 and was the Governate Co-ordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003 to 2004. She has been described by many as the modern day Gertrude Bell, and in 2015 she published the award winning book, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq, about the American occupation of Iraq. She is currently the director of the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program and a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute, where she teaches Middle East politics.
Co-sponsored with Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, YLS National Security Group, & Yale Law Veterans
No
vember 14, 2017
Hijacking Information: Software Vulnerabilities, Ransomware, and Law
This conference was organized in response to the proliferation of vulnerabilities in software, enabling hackers to access systems and sensitive data stored within them. Vulnerabilities in software are the central reason for the majority of recent data breaches. In the aftermath of these breaches, the public discourse tends to focus on questions of accountability, management of vulnerabilities, and regulation. The purpose of this conference was to discuss emerging attack vectors in cyberspace, as well as the regulatory gaps pertaining to data breaches of the recent years. These two panels explored topics pertaining to vulnerability management, patching, the Internet of Things (and Bodies), and the changing cybersecurity landscape with the emergence of ransomware.
Speakers included Kim Zetter (WIRED), Rebekah Lewis (AU Kogod Cybersecurity Governance Center), Professors Scott Shackelford (Indiana University), Josephine Wolff (Rochester Institute of Technology), Annie Anton (Georgia Tech, School of Computing), and Andrea Matwyshyn (Northeastern Law). Panels were moderated by Professor Scott J. Shapiro ’90, and the Center’s Cyber Fellows - Ido Kilovaty. The conference was supported by the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at the Yale Law School.
October 23, 2017
Free Speech & Security in the Age of Social Media Coffee & Conversation with Monika Bickert Head of Product Policy and Counterterrorism, Facebook
Head of Product Policy and Counterterrorism at Facebook Monika Bickert joined the Center for Global Legal Challenges, The Information Society Project, and the National Security Group to discuss free speech and security in the age of social media. She was joined by World Fellow Raheel Khursheed, head of News Partnerships at Twitter in Indian and Southeast Asia. Bickert discussed the challenges of leveraging Facebook’s products to cultivate a more open and free internet, while keeping its users and the public safe.
October 17, 2017
Rethinking Countering Violent Extremism: Religion and Resilience in an “Age of Terror”
CVE – or Countering Violent Extremism – has become a global industry involving states, think tanks and international agencies the world over. But what does CVE look like from the street level? And does it work? Drawing on over 15 years of work in the UK, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, Mali and Canada, Yale World Fellow Abdul-Rehman Malik joined the Center for Global Legal Challenges to reflect on the challenges of designing programs and partnerships that confront the ideology and theology of violent extremism while at the same time remaining true to the concerns of engaged, often politically vulnerable, communities.
October 13, 2017
Sen. Murphy Attends Congress and Foreign Policy Conference
On Friday, October 13, the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges and Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs hosted a day-long symposium on the role of Congress in foreign policy.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered keynote remarks, which can be viewed here. Senator Murphy discussed what he called Congress’ “wholesale abdication of its traditional responsibility to co-set foreign policy priorities with the President.” The conference was supported by the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at the Yale Law School.
October 12, 2017
Carrie Cordero is a Counsel at ZwillGen PLLC, which advises and represents leading internet and tech companies in high-profile online legal matters, including: data protection and information security; law enforcement and surveillance, and more. Carrie’s talk focused on how changes to U.S. intelligence law and policy have focused on information sharing within the U.S. Intelligence Community and amongst government entities.
As a result of the recent 2016 election interference by the Russian government, our law and policies need to be updated to facilitate intelligence and national security information being shared with the public at large. Current and future cybersecurity threats and their potential influence on democratic processes lead to the public having a greater expectation of being informed directly about the government’s assessment of national security threats, and our laws, policies, and institutions need to be ready to take on that expectation.
October 3, 2017
Andrew Burt is a YLS graduate and Chief Privacy Officer & Legal Engineer at Immuta, a data management platform. Andrew’s talk topic focused on the new laws around the world, beginning to force the technology industry to rethink how it approaches the law, on how and why the worlds of law and technology are colliding, and what this means for data-driven companies, the technology industry, and governments and citizens around the world.
Andrew argued that the rise of complex software systems is leading to new legal challenges. For example, the artificial intelligence systems used in self-driving cars challenge the notion of who the law considers “driver.” This illustrates that regulations traditionally meant to govern the way that humans interact have to adapt to a world that has been eaten by software. This goes beyond just self-deriving cars - complex algorithms are used in mortgage and credit decisions, in the criminal justice and immigration systems and in the realm of national security, and more.
October 2, 2017
Law & the War on Terror: A Journalist’s Dispatches from Syria & Iraq
Anand Gopal is a fellow at The Nation Institute, a journalist covering the Middle East, and a scholar studying political violence. His reporting on Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan has appeared in the Atlantic, Harper’s, and elsewhere. He is the author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, which won the Ridenhour Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Helen Bernstein Award. He has won the George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting from Iraq. He received his PhD from Columbia University, where he studied network analysis, and is a professor at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University.