Time for Qualified Immunity to Go

For the last several years, Cato has been leading the campaign to abolish qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that shields state officials, including law enforcement, from liability when they violate people’s constitutional rights. The most immediate practical goal of this campaign has been to convince the Supreme Court to hear one of the many cases calling for qualified immunity to be either narrowed or reconsidered outright. The Supreme Court finally appears ready to confront this question by scheduling for review more than 10 different qualified immunity petitions for possible consideration.

Conservative Big Tech Campaign Based on Myths and Misunderstanding

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President Trump and many of his allies have been critical of Silicon Valley for years, alleging that social media companies are engaged in a campaign aimed at silencing conservative viewpoints. This claim is weak, with little empirical support, and conservative responses have revealed an unfortunate enthusiasm for government regulation of speech and a consistent misunderstanding of the law at the heart of online content moderation debates.

Building a Modern Military: The Force Meets Geopolitical Realities

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Budgetary and strategic inertia has impeded the development of a U.S. military best suited to deal with future challenges. Over the past several decades, the military has repeatedly answered the call to arms as American foreign policy privileges the use of force over other instruments of power and influence. The era of near endless war has now stretched into its third decade. In a new paper, Cato scholars Eric Gomez, Christopher A. Preble, Lauren Sander, & Brandon Valeriano argue that Washington should realign national security objectives and motivate allies and partners to become more capable as America’s relative military advantage wanes and the focus inevitably turns to domestic priorities, including public health.

Chinese-U.S. Relations after the COVID-19 Pandemic

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China’s poor handling of the early stage of the COVID-19 crisis greatly inflamed anti‐​China sentiments in the United States in a counterproductive way. Wanting to “make China pay” is an understandable impulse, but launching a full‐​scale economic or legal war would likely have dangerous consequences. In the Cato Daily Podcast, Doug Bandow and Simon Lester discuss why push‐​back against China is best done with multilateral backing in a nonpolitical setting.