The End of Hypocrisy with Martha Finnemore

The U.S. government seems outraged that people are leaking classified materials about its less attractive behavior. It certainly acts that way: three years ago, after Chelsea Manning, an army private then known as Bradley Manning, turned over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, U.S. authorities imprisoned the soldier under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed cruel and inhumane. The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, appearing on Meet the Press shortly thereafter, called WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, “a high-tech terrorist.”

More recently, following the disclosures about U.S. spying programs

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Other Writing:

Academic Article

Hybrid Institutions and the Law: Interface Solutions or Outlaw Arrangements?

Much discussion of law and e-commerce focuses on the extent to which e-commerce and the Internet weaken sovereign states’ effective control. Recently, in e-commerce, there has been a trend towards “hybrid institutions” which blend public oversight and private enforcement in the international arena. Do these institutions reflect the weakening of state legal orders, and the ...
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Essay

Democracy’s Dilemma – with Bruce Schneier

How can democratic societies protect—and protect themselves from—the free flow of digital information? The Internet was going to set us all free. At least, that is what U.S. policy makers, pundits, and scholars believed in the 2000s.  The Internet would undermine authoritarian rulers by reducing the government’s stranglehold on debate, helping oppressed people realize how ...
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