The Lawfare Podcast

Last week, FBI Director James Comey spoke at the 3rd Annual Cybersecurity Law Institute, hosted by Georgetown University Law Center in cooperation with the American Bar Association Cybersecurity Legal Task Force, Bloomberg BNA, and the Center for Internet SecuritBenjamin Powell, a partner at WilmerHale, interviewed Director Comey.

 

Direct download: Episode_125--Ben_Powell_Interviews_Jim_Comey.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:14pm EDT

Last May, the Bharatiya Janata Party won the first majority government in India in 25 years, giving newly minted Prime Minister Narendra Modi a broad mandate to initiate much needed reforms in the country. The question is, how is Modi delivering on his promises to root out corruption, spur economic growth and job creation, and garner greater respect for India on the world stage? 

This Wednesday, the India Project at Brookings hosted a roundtable of India experts to evaluate Modi's first year in office. They panel considers developments over the last year in India's economic, social, and foreign policy, including its treatment of minorities, its accent to the title of fastest growing economy in the world, and its revived engagement with its neighbors and world powers alike. They also take a turn towards the future. Has Modi set expectations so high he cannot help but disappoint? Or is India on the up-and-up, with what he calles "Acche Din" or "Good Days" on the way? And what does all this mean for the United States and how engages with both India and the rest of the Asia-Pacific?

The panel includes Tanvi Madan, Bruce Jones, Diane Farrell, Vikram Singh Mehta, and Milan Vaishnav. 

It's the Lawfare Podcast, Episode #124: The Modi Government in India Turns One

Direct download: Episode_124--One_year_of_Modi.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:22pm EDT

For months, the world has been transfixed by the apparent brutality of the Islamic State's practices in war. The beheading of journalists, the burning of prisoners and the enslavement of religious minorities all seem like a return to a barbaric past. Certainly, these practices seem far removed from any notion of conduct constrained by law.

Islam, however, has a robust religious legal tradition, including on matters of war. So to better understand that tradition and its connection (or lack thereof) with the warfare of contemporary groups, including the Islamic State, we turned to Andrew March, Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. March is the author of Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus as well as numerous scholarly and popular articles on Islamic political and legal thought. In the last few weeks, he has also published pieces in Foreign Affairs and on Brookings' own Markaz blog taking a closer look at the Islamic State and the ways it interprets, adjusts and applies traditional Islamic jurisprudence.

In this podcast, March discusses the Islamic law of war, both in the classical tradition and in the discourse and practice of contemporary states and non-state actors. In doing so, he walks us through some of this vast, complex tradition, and he warns Western governments that their interests are best served by staying out of the internal interpretive debates of religious communities.

Direct download: Episode_123--Yishai_and_Andrew_March.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:44pm EDT

The Triple Entente Beer Summit was a great success, with an audience that filled the Washington Firehouse loft and a cast that mashed up Lawfare, Rational Security, and the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast.  We attribute the podcast’s freewheeling interchange to the engaged audience, our profound respect for each other, and, mostly, the beer. After a discussion of between the combined panels, we throw the event over to the audience, which demonstrates that we could have produced almost as good a program by randomly selecting audience members to appear on the panel with us.

 

Direct download: Triple_Entente_Beer_Summit.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:01am EDT

This week, following the New York Times revelation of the purported identities of three covert CIA agents, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies, along with the James Madison Project and Just Security, hosted an entitled “Whistleblowing and America’s Secrets: Ensuring a Viable Balance,” which with the support of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins, we now present to you in full. In the discussion, Bob Litt, General Counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with Ken Dilanian of the Associated Press, Dr. Gabriel Schoenfeld of the Hudson Institute, and Lawfare’s own Steve Vladeck, tackle the important legal and policy questions surrounding classified leak prosecutions, the responsibilities of the press, whistleblower protections, and the future of the Espionage Act.

Mark Zaid, the Executive Director of the James Madison Project moderated the discussion.

Direct download: Episode_121_--_Bob_Litt_on_NYTimes.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:45pm EDT

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