The Washington Post this morning reports that the White House twice issued memoranda to the CIA authorizing the use of its so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques. I'm not quite sure why this is breaking news. President Bush, after all, has alr...

[For The Conference on The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights]Barry Friedman Much of the conference commentary thus far has focused, for evident reasons, on the Supreme Court. Yet, it also is the case that the world of abortion is subterranean,...

In a 93-page opinion in the Miers/Bolton contempt case, Judge Bates not only rejects all of the various Administration arguments against justiciability, but goes so far as to reach the merits and hold that there is no basis for the DOJ argument that ...

President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government,

Congressman John Conyers' recent subpoena to Karl Rove raises the interesting (and unsettled) question whether former Presidents can successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent their former aides...

I am delighted to announce that Congressman Steve Israel has announced a bill to create a Democracy Index. As Balkinization readers are aware, this is an idea I've been working on for the last few years and is the subject of a recent book, The...

As I've noted here before, in early December the Supreme Court is going to engage one of the most important cases of the Term, Free Enterprise Fund v. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which raises questions about how the Constitution...

Micah L. Sifry Here's a rough draft of what I'm going to say at tonight's "Digital Democracy Debate" with author Matthew Hindman at Yale. Let me know in the comments if you think I've missed anything or gotten anything wrong. Hindman is the author...

Crosspost from Freakonomics: Here’s a behavioral puzzler: Why might it be more efficient for Connecticut to change its sales tax rate from 6 percent to e^2 percent? Or more generally, why might using irrational numbers as tax rates be less...

All of my energies are currently taken up by preparation for a lecture course that I'm giving at Harvard College on the political system constituted by the Constitution. (Most of you can imagine the general themes, though the course in fact is broader...