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This paper explores the way in which Cold War politics and ideology, through its narrowing of the New Deal's broad understanding of "security," affected federally-funded social welfare programs. Beginning in the late 1930s and continuing through World War II, the Roosevelt Administration shrewdly coupled social security and national security. Its Federal Security Agency (FSA) - created through a congressionally-approved reorganization plan in 1939 - housed old age insurance, federal education assistance, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, for example, alongside civil defense programs, weapons development, and medical research. FSA administrators under both Roosevelt and Truman advocated the notion that war necessitated expansion, not retraction, of the welfare state. But the Cold War gave credence to a different understanding of "security," one that privileged "internal security," eschewed "collectivism," and championed the protections offered by the free market. As a result many advocates of a more liberal welfare state found their power stripped and their reforms stymied. Yet the perceived imperatives of the Cold War also presented opportunities. This paper describes how lawyers within the FSA used the anti-totalitarian notion of the Rule of Law to push for the expansive welfare state they had long envisioned. Unable to demand more generous social welfare benefits, they insisted that existing social welfare programs adopt the framework of legal rights, procedures, and principles that was essential to a free, democratic society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the U.S. Congress debates legislation to curb executive abuse of the state secrets privilege, this paper examines how the U.S. use and application of the state secrets privilege compares with that of other countries. The Article considers the history and use of the privilege in the United States, the derivation of the privilege from English precedent and the current efforts to reform the use of the privilege. As with many other initiatives related to the Bush Administration's war on terror, the question of the appropriate application of the privilege turns on issues of national security balanced with the need to preserve the rule of law, individual rights, liberty interests and government accountability.This paper also examines the history and use of the privilege in other nations which derive their litigation processes from the English model, and looks at recent trends in applying the privilege in Scotland, England, Israel and India. This comparative analysis contextualizes both the current and proposed use of the U.S. privilege and the current efforts at legislative reform, and concludes that the proposed reforms are a positive step toward restoring government accountability. The paper further concludes that the proposed reforms in some respects do not go far enough, and that they should explicitly account for alleged human rights abuses by the government in determining whether a claim of privilege should be upheld. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, more than 39 million United States citizens traveled to foreign countries aboard commercial air carriers. Was this their right or merely an activity permitted by their government? What statutory and constitutional restrictions should limit the ability of Americans to leave and return home? How have legal conceptions of a "right to international travel" changed over time, particularly during periods of heightened threats - real and imagined - to national security? The countervailing, twin forces of economic globalization and international terrorism render answers to these questions both more difficult and more urgent. Most American citizens imagine their right to engage in international travel - a right proclaimed by numerous international treaties - to be much more secure than it really is. This paper explores these questions through the harrowing case of two American citizens denied their "right" to return home from travel abroad because of government suspicion of terrorist entanglements. After a detailed examination of the constitutional arguments that have led the Supreme Court to grant only limited procedural protections to the right to international travel as an "aspect of liberty," the paper presents the argument for heightened judicial protection of the right to enter and leave the country as a fundamental right of United States citizenship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender-based political asylum is a relatively new area of asylum law inthe United States. Legal actors arguing or adjudicating claims inimmigration court involving honor killing, rape, domestic violence orforced marriage, to name a few, must do so in the absence of explicitlegal guidance, leaving room for interpretation and inconsistency on thepart of immigration judges and trial attorneys representing theDepartment of Homeland Security. This paper examines the role of thestate in categorizing violence in claims for asylum as either politicaland, therefore, recognizable under the law or private, and beyond thepurview of the state. Through such everyday practices the stateconstructs frameworks for conceptualizing categories of violence andharm. This paper considers the circumstances under which the staterecognizes violence as political and (re)produces boundaries betweenpublic and private. How do those seeking asylum address the question ofpolitics? How is the violence experienced by women marked through thelegal process and how does it differ from that of men? Whatimplications do concerns about gender-based, especially sexual, violencein the U.S. have on the state's willingness to address the same sorts ofviolence abroad? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of expiring provisions within the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 (Patriot Act) has received much debate within Congress and the general public. While Congressional debate focuses primarily upon the expiring provisions in the Patriot Act, no on discusses the moment that was missed in December, 2005 when an amendment aimed to alter the existing and controversial formula for allocating funds for first responders in their critical functions to prevent, prepare for and respond to acts of terrorism, was shelved, perhaps due to pork barrel influence. This paper applies public economics methodology to address a fundamentally legal problem created by terrorism. What is the optimal plan for Congress to allocate funds for counterterrorism and homeland security? This paper proposes an economic model for allocating federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant funds to states to maximize homeland security "needs" and priorities. The approach is to model homeland security funding as resulting from social welfare maximizing goals of a benevolent social planner. State government data are used to infer the optimal funding levels to cover expected damages associated with various targets: population density, hazardous material sources, federal courts, hospitals, interstates, pipelines, power generation, public water use, airports, universities, port capacity, and confined feeding operations. The difference between vulnerability-based allocations and the SHSP allocations indicate that the SHSP program over-compensates for population-based vulnerabilities and under-compensates for other vulnerabilities. The results suggest that the HSGP does not eliminate the population-bias of the SHSP. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The devastation caused by hurricanes of Katrina and Rita in 2005 highlighted the importance of federal, state and local response in the face of disaster. It also highlighted the importance of allocating homeland security funds to areas in need. Since the attacks of September 11, federal spending on assistance to the states for law enforcement, emergency services, and firefighting has increased by more than 1,000 percent. This paper examines the political factors contributing to the allocation of grant funding, both in terms of current outlays and new outlays, for one of the largest federal formula grant programs, the Department of Homeland Security, State Homeland Security Grant Program (SHSP). In a systematic study of state allocations for 2003, statistical regression results show that current outlays and new outlays are significantly motivated by congressional representation and partisanship. While Committee membership has the correct sign, it is not significant once we adjust for population. These results imply that states that have larger political clout in Congress get more grant funding and states that are aligned to the opposite political party get more money. States with these attributes will continue to lobby in favor of the current formula. This paper provides an explanation for failures in Congress (most recently in December 2005) to correct for these political biases in the current SHSP funding formula. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of late Empire has come out of the closet. The doctrine of preeminence and preemption proclaimed by the new National Security Strategy of the U.S., the Patriot Act adopted by the U.S. Congress, and the end-less world-wide 'War against Terrorism' proclaimed by Western powers have put into question the thus far taken for granted protections of liberal constitutions and the rule of law across the globe. As the project of global human rights and collective security appears yielding to reinvigorated imperial designs, it appears imperative that legal scholars explore the validity of universality claims of modern constitutionalism. This paper is a response to this imperative. A recent pronouncement of the Queen's Bench of the British High Court about the British colony of Diego Garcia (an Indian Ocean island leased to the U.S. for use as a military base) furnishes the point of departure for this project. The pronouncement of this court brings into sharp relief contradictions between liberal constitutionalism and imperatives of empire. Constitutional guarantees of British law were held not available to Diego Garcia on account of it being a colony. The recent pronouncements of the U.S. Circuit Court in the Gauntanamo cases (now before the Supreme Court) entail a parallel fracture in the constitutional order. The first part of the paper uses these cases as the vantage point to conduct a comparative study of the colonial question in American and British constitutional law. The working hypothesis is that the colonialism, saturated with issues of racial difference, has historically operated as, and continues to operate as, a governing exception to liberal constitutionalism. The second part of the paper turns to legal theory and examines whether it adequately takes the interface between colonialism and liberal constitutionalism into account. Here the working hypothesis is that Carl Schmitt's decisionist theory of constitutional exception, while providing a productive opening, needs to be modified to address the colonial fracture of liberal constitutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events of September 11 changed many things. The expectation of increased security for the American public coupled with the concern of a loss of civil liberties and privacy. Biometric technology was at the center of this debate. Thrust into limelight with highly controversial legislative mandates, such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act, the American public was introduced to a technology which was simultaneously positioning itself to meet escalating demands for the War on Terror while fending off the growing concerns of surveillance techniques. Privacy advocates soon latched onto the Orwellian rhetoric of "Big brother" and began attacking biometric technology as the actualization of the Benthamite Panopitcon. Thus, the political values associated with the war on terror both favored and encumbered the biometric community. Politicians were searching for a solution to identify potential terrorists, and biometric technology seemed a panacea but from the perspective of critics the technology presented a threat to privacy and civil liberties. Meanwhile, the biometrics community was struggling with the usual host of problems associated with bringing a technology to maturity but doing so in warp speed. This paper incorporates NSF funded research to explore societal acceptance of biometric technology through the lens of September 11. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Protect Our Children, Secure Our Borders!" is become the rallying cry adopted by Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, the women's counterpart to the Minutemen. Joining other anti-immigration organizations, MAIA has honed their message around traditional mothering discourse. Calling for mothers to take action to protect their families and children, they argue that immigration is a direct threat to their children. Along with their mission statement "to bring awareness to and educate the LEGAL American families whose children are the silent victims of this Invasion of Illegal Aliens," and "to protect their children's future." Primary targets of MAIA are the US born babies and children of immigrants. Claiming the 14th amendment only covers babies born to US citizens, they refer to babies born to immigrant mothers in the US as "anchor babies." In the following paper, I will analyze MAIA homeland security discourse that is used to gain support for their movement and used to shield themselves from racist allegations against Mexican women and children. I analyze the arguments, images, and sound bites used to identify immigrant mothers and their children as economic and security threats to US families and their children. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morning of September 11, 2001 changed the way a lot of American society was structured. Many laws, regulations, and norms were altered in the aftermath and extensive studies were commissioned to make recommendations as to how to deal with potential future disasters. Many of these studies failed to take into account the actual events of that day however. The recommendations they made were usually based off policy recommendations made prior to 9/11. By examining data collected from officers involved with the events in and around the World Trade Centers on the morning of September 11 this paper examines what effects a disaster of this magnitude has on how street level policing is carried out. My analysis combines a structural account and a detailed analysis of the reports filed by the officers themselves to better understand what happened to traditional police command structures and how they were altered to conform to the situation as it happened. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]