Jameel Jaffer: Speech and the Border

The U.S. government has historically enjoyed special investigative and enforcement powers at its borders. In recent years, these powers have been invoked to justify, among many other things, sweeping surveillance of international communications, suspicionless searches of travelers' laptops and cellphones, inspection of travelers' social media accounts, and "extreme vetting" of travelers' political and religious views.  Jameel Jaffer, Founding Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, will discuss the effect of the U.S. border policy on the First Amendment freedoms, and the role that we should expect the First Amendment to play in limiting government power in this context.

Jameel Jaffer is the Founding Director of the Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, which works to protect and expand the freedoms of speech and the press through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Until recently, Jaffer served as Deputy Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, where he oversaw the ACLU’s work relating to free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights. He litigated some of the most significant post-9/11 cases relating to national security and civil liberties, including cases concerning detention, interrogation, surveillance, targeted killing, and government secrecy. Jaffer co-led the litigation that resulted in the publication of the Bush administration’s “torture memos”—a lawsuit the New York Times described as “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure”— and the Obama administration’s “drone memos.” Jaffer is a graduate of Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School.