Lawfare Daily: Entrepreneurial Federalism and the New National Security, with Ashley Deeks and Kristen Eichensehr
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Lawfare Contributing Editor Professor Ashley Deeks of the University of Virginia School of Law and Professor Kristen Eichensehr of Harvard Law School to discuss their recent article entitled, "Federalism and the New National Security," recently published in the Harvard Law Review.
Together, they discuss the new ways that states are engaging in national security policy (which Deeks and Eichensehr call "entrepreneurial federalism"), the costs and benefits of such practices, and strategies for how the states and the various branches of the federal government should engage with them.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What the states are doing in many of these areas, whether it's real estate or TikTok, they are |
| 0:07.1 | responding to what they're seeing as threats to their own citizens, right? The moves look more |
| 0:11.9 | defensive rather than offensive, rather than trying to set a foreign policy. It's the Lawfare |
| 0:18.1 | podcast. I'm senior editor Scott R. Anderson, here with Professor Ashley Deeks at the University of Virginia School of Law and Professor Kristen Eichensier of Harvard Law School. |
| 0:26.3 | If you have sort of clear articulations of legal authority, of the nature of the security concerns and the interaction that the states and the federal government see between these two levels of government, that would make it much |
| 0:37.6 | easier going forward to sort out these kind of inevitable collisions, conflicts, at least swerving |
| 0:45.4 | to avoid each other that are going to happen going forward. |
| 0:48.9 | Today, we are discussing their latest scholarship on federalism and the new role that states are |
| 0:53.2 | playing in U.S. national security policy. |
| 0:56.1 | Christina Ashley, this is the second time we've had you on the podcast to talk about your |
| 1:00.5 | scholarship. |
| 1:01.1 | About a year ago, you were on talking about a piece about frictionless government and |
| 1:05.2 | foreign relations, about costs and benefits, I think emphasis on the untold benefits of friction in various types of formulating foreign relations. |
| 1:14.4 | And now you're here to talk to us about another piece that really grows from that sort of thesis, |
| 1:20.4 | particularly at the federalism level. The title is federalism and the new national security. |
| 1:26.0 | Coming out in the Harvard Law Review, I think actually already out in the Harvard Law Review now at this point. |
| 1:30.0 | It's a really interesting piece talking about something that is increasingly in the news |
| 1:33.9 | that we're seeing all the time about the role of the state's play in what has conventionally |
| 1:38.6 | been understood to be one of the big areas of federal authority, and that is national security and particularly foreign relations. |
| 1:46.2 | So talk to us a little bit about what led you to be interested in this topic and this line of scholarship that you guys are producing. |
| 1:52.8 | Chris and I'll start with you. |
| 1:54.3 | So this piece, as you mentioned, grows out of the frictionless government piece that we talked to you about just over a year ago. |
... |
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