The DREAMer Incarceration Rate

President Trump is considering a cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA grants temporary work permits and lawful immigration presence to many young illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. News of individual DREAMers committing crimes contributed to the public perception that DREAMers are disproportionately crime prone and may influence President Trump’s decision to cancel or continue DACA. In fact, a new paper from Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh shows that DREAMers have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans of the same age and education level.

Reforming the National Flood Insurance Program: Toward Private Flood Insurance

Authorization for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) expires on September 30, 2017, offering policymakers an opportunity to rethink the scheme and bring forward reforms that would allow a private flood insurance market to develop in its place. In a new paper, Cato scholars Ike Brannon and Ari Blask delve into the NFIP’s history, structure, and current problems, as well as the failures of recent reform efforts. The authors conclude in their analysis that, by all salient criteria, a private market is superior to a government-run flood insurance program.

A Balanced Threat Assessment of China’s South China Sea Policy

U.S. lawmakers and analysts see China’s efforts to control much of the South China Sea as a serious threat, endangering regional security, freedom of navigation, and the liberal world order.  A new paper from Benjamin Herscovitch finds that political leaders and experts exaggerate the dangers of China’s South China Sea policy. “Although China’s South China Sea policy is inconsistent with some of the norms and institutions of the rules-based liberal world order,” says Herscovitch, “Beijing does not seek to undermine this order as a whole and remains supportive of key elements of the international system.”

Doomed to Repeat It: The Long History of America’s Protectionist Failures

A renewed focus on international trade’s disruptions to the U.S. economy, while worthwhile, has spawned troubling suggestions that the U.S. government should be more willing to experiment again with protectionism to help American workers and the economy. In a new paper, Cato scholar Scott Lincicome shows that, contrary to the fashionable rhetoric, American protectionism has repeatedly failed as an economic strategy.

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Cato University: College of History and Philosophy

History is indispensable to understanding and defending liberty under our constitutionally limited, representative government. And at the core of that history is philosophy: the underlying beliefs and values that guided the American Founders in their creating a constitutional order of separated powers, checks and balances, and liberty. Cato University’s College of History and Philosophy in October combines these two powerful subjects together to explore the history of liberty and justice, of wealth and poverty, of individual rights and the rule of law.

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The Libertarian Mind Audiobook

The Libertarian Mind, by David Boaz, longtime executive vice president of the Cato Institute, is the best available guide to the history, ideas, and growth of libertarianism, and is the ultimate resource for the current, burgeoning libertarian movement. This acclaimed book is now available as a fully unabridged audiobook, ready for immediate downloading, on Audible.com.

The Supreme Court: Past and Prologue
A Look at the October 2016 and 2017 Terms

The annual Constitution Day symposium, presented by Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies, marks the day in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the U.S. Constitution. We celebrate that event each year with the release of the new issue of the Cato Supreme Court Review and with a day-long symposium featuring noted scholars discussing the recently concluded Supreme Court term and the important cases coming up.