RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Vanda Felbab-Brown, February 02, 2012, The Brookings Institution
Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses key challenges in reducing crime in slums in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. Felbab-Brown argues that successful policies must go beyond infrastructure projects and address a wide variety of economic deficiencies. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, January 11, 2012, The Washington Post
Benjamin Wittes examines the past decade of policy experimentation at Guantanamo Bay, arguing that since Guantanamo will likely be around for another 10 years, America needs to develop principles around detention policies that command support from a wide swath of the political system. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Robert M. Chesney and Benjamin Wittes, December 19, 2011, Lawfare
Benjamin Wittes and Robert Chesney discuss the National Defense Authorization Act, examining the key questions people are asking about the bill and providing an overview of the interaction between military detention and the operation of the criminal justice system. Read More
PAST EVENT
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Washington, DC
On December 13, the Governance Studies program at Brookings hosted a Judicial Issues Forum examining how constitutional law is tested by technological change and how to preserve constitutional principles without hindering progress. Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes and Nonresident Senior Fellow Jeffrey Rosen, co-editors of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change (Brookings Institution Press, 2011), explored how technological developments plausible by the year 2025 could stress current constitutional law with two of the book's contributors, O. Carter Snead and Timothy Wu. Read More
VIDEO
Benjamin Wittes, October 28, 2011
Benjamin Wittes explains the statute that gives U.S. officials the legal right to target terrorists who are U.S. citizens in foreign countries.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, September 26, 2011, The Brookings Institution
On September 16, 2011, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor, John O. Brennan, told conferees in a keynote address at the Harvard Law School-Brookings conference that the United States must not let down its guard in fighting terrorist organizations on a broad front, writes Benjamin Wittes. Wittes posts an excerpt of Mr. Brennan’s speech as well as the full video. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, September 21, 2011, The Brookings and Harvard Law School Project on Law and Security
The idea that one must strike a balance between liberty and security hangs over America's entire debate on how legal authorities should deal with security problems, especially with the challenges posed by terrorism and the Internet. Ben Wittes suggests, however, that the relationship between liberty and security is, more accurately, one of "hostile symbiosis," where the two are both mutually dependent and mutually threatening. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Robert M. Chesney, Matthew Waxman and Benjamin Wittes, June 15, 2011, House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
In a briefing paper to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Benjamin Wittes, Matthew Waxman, and Robert Chesney examine the problem of transfers of Yemeni detainees from Guantánamo Bay. The authors lay out why Yemen has proven such an intractable problem in the disposition of Guantánamo cases and why generalizing the Yemen predicament to the rest of the Guantánamo population is a mistake. Read More
VIDEO
Benjamin Wittes, May 13, 2011
While some argue that harsh interrogation techniques helped the U.S. find Osama Bin Laden, expert Benjamin Wittes notes that it’s impossible to say whether the same information could have been extracted using conventional military interrogation methods.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, Robert M. Chesney and Larkin Reynolds, May 2011, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney and Larkin Reynolds describe in detail and analyze the U.S. courts’ work to date on habeas corpus cases concerning Guantánamo detainees. As the courts are now the main decision-makers in the effort to define the rules of military detention, the law established in these cases will in all likelihood govern not merely the Guantánamo detentions themselves, write the authors, but any other detentions around the world over which American courts might acquire habeas jurisdiction. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, April 25, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes reacts to the release and subsequent media coverage of classified materials on the prison population held at Guantánamo Bay. Wittes argues that Americans should not vacillate between calling for the freeing of detainees and expressing shock at the actual danger they may pose. Instead, he says, the right approach is to build systems that effectively handle the uncertainty in releasing and detaining the Gitmo population. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Orin S. Kerr, April 19, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Orin Kerr examines the future of government surveillance laws, using as context a hypothetical terrorist threat to a subway system. As the use of computerized surveillance increases, argues Kerr, government should add new surveillance law protections to the output end, known as "use restrictions." These are rules that strictly regulate what the government can do with information it has collected and processed, Kerr writes. Read More
VIDEO
Benjamin Wittes, April 05, 2011
The Obama administration has abandoned efforts to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators in civilian courts, saying the suspects will be tried in military tribunals at the Guantánamo Bay prison. Benjamin Wittes says this was a tough decision, but the right one.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, April 01, 2011, The Brookings Insitution
In a world where Americans simultaneously demand more privacy for their own data and more government access to data that "connects the dots" to identify terrorists, Ben Wittes says it's time to ask if our privacy debates are conceptually outmoded. Wittes proposes a different framing for the debate—a concept he terms "databuse." Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, March 10, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes sees two reasons to be cautiously optimistic that President Obama and Congress will reach a deal on Guantánamo. Dual commitment to making policy in this area will force congressional Republicans to negotiate and, for the first time, nearly everyone is talking about a common objective: a legal framework for detention policy. Read More