Andrew P. Napolitano

Is the CIA in your underwear?

In a year, if a friend asks you if the CIA is in your underwear, you probably wouldn't take the question seriously. You'd be wrong. The CIA is spending millions in tax dollars to get into your underwear next year. Published September 6, 2023

Neither liberty nor safety: Giving up one’s rights is a personal choice

Benjamin Franklin's famous one-liner about the relationship between liberty and safety has intrigued me since I first read it in high school. Published August 30, 2023

American government’s torture tactics come home to roost

Nothing is more destructive of human decency, nothing is less fruitful in seeking truth, nothing is more totalitarian and nothing so undermines the government's own cases as its use of torture. Published August 23, 2023

When the First Amendment dies: Raid on Kansas weekly newspaper raises troubling concerns

When freedom of speech and freedom of the press die, it will happen by a thousand small cuts. Published August 16, 2023

Importance of the Fourth Amendment: FBI unwittingly investigates itself

This past April, the FBI began an investigation to determine who was using illegal software to spy from the United States on people in Mexico. Published August 9, 2023

Individuals, not government, enjoy the freedom of speech

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." -- First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Published August 2, 2023

FBI illegally accessed Americans’ communications 278,000 times last year

Late last week, a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealed that he had had enough of the FBI and Congress trashing the Constitution. Published July 26, 2023

What if government is the negation of liberty?

What if liberty and democracy are opposites? What if the principle underlying liberty is to restrain the government to maximize individual autonomy? Published July 19, 2023

Governments hate and fear the exercise of natural rights

The world is filled with self-evident truths -- truisms -- that philosophers, lawyers and judges know need not be proved. Published July 12, 2023

Independence Day 2023: Our out-of-control democracy

Does it really matter if the instrument curtailing liberty is a monarch or a popularly elected legislature? Published July 5, 2023

Congress has not declared war on Russia, but it has authorized use of U.S. forces against it

Can the president fight any war he wishes? Can Congress fund any war it chooses? Are there constitutional, legal and moral requirements that must first be met before war is waged? Published June 28, 2023

No warrant? No problem

In 1928, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis characterized the values underlying the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution as embracing the uniquely American right, which he called the right to be let alone. Published June 21, 2023

The case against Donald Trump

It gives me no joy to write about prosecuting former President Donald Trump. Published June 14, 2023

State secrets undermine due process: First, Fifth and Sixth amendments violated

In a public courtroom in the United States in which a high-level criminal case is being tried, the prosecutors are permitted to press a buzzer on their table in the midst of an argument to the court by defense counsel. Published June 7, 2023

Government attacks free will when it assaults property rights

Last week, the Supreme Court, in a surprising display of unanimity, upheld the traditional values underlying property rights when it prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating mud puddles. Published May 31, 2023

FISA Court’s warrants are lawful but profoundly unconstitutional

In response to President Richard Nixon's unlawful use of the FBI and the CIA to spy on his domestic political opponents in the early 1970s, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It limits all domestic surveillance not for law enforcement purposes to the procedures set forth in the act. Published May 24, 2023