A Transformational Agenda for National Security

Past efforts to "reimagine" national security in legal scholarship have largely avoided systematic engagement with the foundational assumptions and presumptions of the field. Challenging and critiquing those assumptions is, however, necessary to producing scholarly work that reimagines, rather than reproduces, status quo approaches to U.S. national security. This Article presents an agenda for reimagining national security through legal scholarship, which is premised on the view that challenging the national security status quo should be part of those efforts. In doing so, this agenda explores seven premises central to how U.S. national security is currently conceived of, practiced, and implemented.

Moving beyond the law, the agenda presented in this Article examines the structural power dynamics and political economy of national security, demonstrating why these issues are important to reimagining and transforming how we approach the discipline of national security as legal academics and advocates.