Today, Orin Kerr offers a provisional legal analysis of an ICE policy authorizing forcible entry into homes without a warrant signed by a judge; Elizabeth Economy speaks with Rowena He about supporting human rights and resisting Communist Party repression in China; and Michael McFaul argues that to compete effectively against Russia and China, the United States should make a major long-term effort to rebuild trust with European allies in the wake of now-retracted US threats to take over Greenland by force.
Law & Policy
At The Volokh Conspiracy, Senior Fellow and Stanford Law School professor Orin Kerr analyzes a timely issue in federal law enforcement policy: whether or not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can enter a home without a judicial warrant. “The standard view,” Kerr writes, “has been that administrative warrants can't authorize home entry because they're executive branch orders, and the executive branch can't be in charge of deciding whether to give itself a warrant.” Kerr notes that the leaked ICE memo authorizing the policy of entering homes under executive-branch warrants “does not include any legal analysis,” so he can only offer a “tentative take” on the legal position of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But the distinguished Fourth Amendment scholar does conclude that the “policy is likely wrong in light of [Supreme Court rulings in] Coolidge, Shadwick, and Payton”—while also emphasizing that “the DHS position is not frivolous” given possible arguments grounded in other Supreme Court and federal district court rulings. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
For the latest episode of China Considered, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy sits down with Research Fellow Rowena He to explore her journey from participating in pro-democracy demonstrations during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests to becoming a leading scholar on Chinese human rights. He recounts how the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown shattered her generation's hopes, forcing survivors to publicly conform while doing their best to keep the memory of the movement alive. He also describes being forced to flee Hong Kong in 2022 under threatening circumstances and emphasizes that international support and pressure on human rights remain crucial, not just morally but practically, since human rights violations in China ultimately impact the entire world. He insists, in conclusion, that despite decades of setbacks, history will ultimately favor those fighting for truth and justice. Watch or listen here.
US Foreign Policy
“The big news out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was that the United States will not use force to take Greenland,” writes Senior Fellow Michael McFaul in a new post at his Substack. But for “the first time in the history of our country, President Trump threatened to attack a democratic country.” Accordingly, the former US ambassador to Russia writes, “trust between the United States and Europe has taken a deep hit. It will take a long time to renew.” Turning to history, McFaul notes that the NATO alliance has weathered strains and tensions before, from the 1956 Suez Canal crisis to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But McFaul argues that the more America tries “to bully other countries to get our way, the more of these countries will turn to China.” Given the international threats posed by Russia and China, McFaul concludes, the US should “make a major, long-term effort” to restore trust and strong relations with its longtime European allies. Read more here.
Security and Defense
The Pentagon’s traditional way of buying weapons is slow and riddled with complex and changing rules. Systems take years to come online, and shifting requirements and funding cause havoc, argue Visiting Fellows Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn in a new essay at Defining Ideas. They propose that the Pentagon take a cue from the management tool that created the COVID vaccine in record time: advance market commitments. This approach promises to open the procurement process to new, nimble competitors; establish clear and “good enough” requirements for systems in advance of production; and respond to the demands of a world in which rapidly deployable weapons—such as the drones ruling the battlefields in Ukraine—are increasingly important. Kahn and Costa write, “It is time to unleash the unique competitive ecosystem of the US economy to upgrade the quality of American military power.” Read more here.
Artificial Intelligence
Senior Fellow Andrew B. Hall writes at a16zcrypto about “how [large language models] and crypto, combined smartly, might help us create ways to resolve prediction markets at scale that are very difficult to manipulate and that are accurate, fully transparent, and credibly neutral.” Hall notes that millions of dollars trade on global events under contracts with sometimes vague or ambiguous terms for resolution. For example, those betting on the outcome of Venezuela’s last presidential election “faced an impossible situation: The government declared Nicolás Maduro the winner; the opposition and international observers alleged fraud.” Under these conditions, should “official information” or the “consensus of credible reporting” determine who made the correct prediction? Hall, noting that there are many such cases, says that a “specific [AI] model and prompt locked into the blockchain at the time a contract is created” could help fairly resolve future settlement controversies. Read more here.
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