Episode 42: The Magic Bullet Travel Ban(d)

The National Security Law Podcast

Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck

Courses, Politics, News, Education, Government

4.8 • 646 Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2017

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week Professors Chesney and Vladeck start with a close look at Smith v. Trump, a case that seeks a judicial ruling on whether the Islamic State really falls within the scope of the 2001 AUMF. The case presents standing and political-question doctrine issues, and will be argued soon before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This leads into an update on ACLU v. Mattis (the attempt by ACLU to represent the still-unidentified US citizen held as an enemy combatant), as the court has issued an order to show cause (due Monday) why the government should not allow access-to-counsel at this stage. This is followed by an update on the Travel Ban litigation (giving rise to the title of this episode), and after that the upcoming Bowe Bergdahl sentencing (and, more to the point, the combination of Presidential commentary on the case and a statement from the White House emphasizing the importance of avoiding unlawful command influence). At that point, your hosts come back to AUMF-type issues, in relation to the recent ambush in Niger and subsequent talk about whether the government has kept Congress adequately informed about the geographic scope of its operations. Finally, they wrap with an overview of an obscure part of the pending National Defense Authorization Act bill, one dealing with the third-country effects of computer network operations. Well, that's the last of the useful stuff. Stick around to the bitter end, and you'll get an earful of NBA predictions too... (sigh).

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello from Austin and welcome to episode 42 of the National Security Law podcast, brought to you by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas.
0:18.4	I'm Bobby Chesney.
0:19.5	I'm Steve Lottick.
0:20.3	So if this is episode 42, I guess we now
0:22.5	know both what the meaning of life is, and we're going to be retiring this episode, Jersey,
0:27.8	for all time, for all purposes, for all teams. There's a lot of connotations, a lot of symbolism
0:32.8	under the number 42. You can get a Dan Brown novel out of this. Oh, gosh, don't get any ideas.
0:38.5	Have you seen any of these sites that do like mock Dan Brown, like descriptions?
0:45.0	No.
0:46.0	Yeah, they are, search this out.
0:48.3	I will not try to copy it.
0:49.5	In my copious free time, I will go and look at the Dan Brown not so fanfic websites.
0:53.8	Maybe you save that for
0:54.5	the trivia portion of the show. Steve, what are we going to talk about today that's substantive?
0:57.9	So here it is October 24th. We're recording this right around noon, central daylight time.
1:02.3	We have actually a fair amount to talk about, Bobby. There's a big oral argument coming up in
1:06.0	the D.C. Circuit this Friday. In the Nathan Smith case, this is the Army Captain who was trying to challenge the
1:13.1	legality of having the 2001 authorization for use of military force applied to ISIS. The district
1:19.8	court, of course, dumped that case on a series of distissibility grounds. We're going to talk a bit
1:23.8	about what we think the D.C DC Circuit might be interested in on Friday,
1:28.0	and spoiler alert why, I think the question is not whether Nathan Smith loses, but on which of the two
1:33.9	grounds, and just how, how sort of, well, we'll get there. Other news, right, in related topics,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.