American Law in the New Global Conflict

81 Pages Posted: 21 Aug 2023 Last revised: 15 Mar 2024

See all articles by Mark Jia

Mark Jia

Georgetown University Law Center

Date Written: August 19, 2023

Abstract

This Article surveys how a growing rivalry between the United States and China is changing the American legal system. It argues that U.S.-China conflict is reproducing, in attenuated form, the same politics of threat that has driven wartime legal development for much of our history. The result is that American law is reprising familiar patterns and pathologies. There has been a diminishment in rights among groups with imputed ties to a geopolitical adversary. But there has also been a modest expansion in rights where advocates have linked desired reforms with geopolitical goals. Institutionally, the new global conflict has at times fostered executive overreach, interbranch agreement, and interparty consensus. Legal-culturally, it has in places evinced a decline in legal rationality. Although these developments do not rival the excesses of America's wartime past, they evoke that past and may, over time, replay it. The Article provides a framework for understanding legal developments in this new era, contributes to our understanding of rights and structure in times of conflict, and reflects on what comes next in the new global conflict, and how best to shape it.

Keywords: Constitutional law, foreign relations law, national security law, U.S.-China relations, civil rights, civil liberties, separation of powers

Suggested Citation

Jia, Mark, American Law in the New Global Conflict
(August 19, 2023). New York University Law Review, Forthcoming, Georgetown University Law Center Research Paper No. Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4545459

Mark Jia (Contact Author)

Georgetown University Law Center ( email )

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