From the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court, Cato stands at the forefront of the labyrinth of legal challenges and legislative debates we face over the proper role of government. And no matter how daunting these challenges become, Cato’s commitment to advancing constitutionally limited government and protecting individual rights and liberties remains unwavering, offering a beacon of hope in the quest for a more just and restrained governance.

The Supreme Court has not shied away from controversy recently, with cases involving guns, taxes, social media, judicial deference, the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and former president Donald Trump. The variety of judicial content has presented the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies (CCS) with myriad opportunities to submit consistent, unique, and sometimes radical amicus briefs. The CCS’s reputation as a principled voice for liberty has elicited repeated mentions from the justices and in popular media.

The CCS filed 66 legal briefs in 2023, several of which were cited by and at the Court, indicating their significant impact on the justices themselves.

At oral argument in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo—involving a challenge to so-called Chevron deference in administrative law—former solicitor general Paul Clement twice directed the justices to Cato’s amicus brief, which empirically documented the way judicial deference to administrative agencies has played out in the lower courts.

Justice Samuel Alito cited Cato’s amicus brief in his dissent from denial of certiorari in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, involving the government’s ability to use purportedly race-neutral proxies to effectuate racial discrimination in secondary education. Alito cited Cato’s brief as support for the fact that public entities had openly vowed to flout the Court’s previous rulings related to racial preferences, thus requiring vigilant oversight by the Court in the wake of the Harvard affirmative-action case from the previous term.

CCS scholars were frequently invited to discuss their briefs and legal approach at prominent events. Clark Neily, Cato senior vice president for legal studies, was invited to a high-profile debate with New York University professor Richard Epstein at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention and to speak about the recent Supreme Court term at the Aspen Ideas Festival; Anastasia P. Boden debated Yale professor Akhil Reed Amar in a podcast with the National Constitution Center; and CCS scholars spoke at numerous law schools across the country, including Georgetown, Yale, and University of Michigan, among others.

Following the Supreme Court’s rejection of President Biden’s $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan, Cato and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy teamed up to challenge the administration’s subsequent $39 billion debt cancellation plan with a lawsuit in which they were again represented by lawyers from the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

In the decision striking down Biden’s first loan forgiveness attempt, Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned a concurring opinion in which she explained that the “major questions” doctrine (which provides that courts should require a clear statement of legislative intent to delegate power to executive agencies when they purport to regulate matters of major political or economic significance) is not new and underscores the importance of context when a court interprets a delegation to an administrative agency. The concurring opinion employs a number of analogies that are quite similar to ones that appeared in Cato’s amicus brief in the case.

In Cato’s Letters—from which the Cato Institute derives its name—John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon declared that “freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.” Today that bulwark faces threats from across the ideological spectrum, from attempts to regulate emerging technologies to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies that censor dissenting views. Through rigorous research, legal advocacy, and public engagement, Cato tirelessly champions our constitutional rights to free speech and promotes a libertarian vision for a tolerant, cosmopolitan society that encourages a free exchange of ideas.

Preserving the First Amendment in the digital age is critical to maintaining a free and open society—yet policymakers on both sides are eyeing measures to regulate private tech companies and censor protected speech online. To raise our voice and protect Americans’ freedom of speech and right to privacy, Cato hired senior technology policy research fellow Jennifer Huddleston, formerly a policy counsel at NetChoice, to focus on the intersection of emerging technologies and law, advocating a modern application of constitutional protections in the digital age.

In 2023, Huddleston was a go-to resource for policymakers, ensuring that conversations around artificial intelligence (AI) policy considered the unintended consequences of broad regulations. She was invited to the “Senate AI Insight Forums,” closed-door fact-finding sessions led by a bipartisan group of 14 senators (including Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer). Huddleston urged the senators to protect digital free speech and consider alternatives to regulation that would empower citizens to make their own informed decisions about online content.

Cato also welcomed fellow for free expression and technology David Inserra, formerly a content policy expert at Meta. His research focuses on how government policies, social media content moderation, and our broader society should value and promote a culture of free expression online.

Inserra and Huddleston write extensively about content moderation (and the need to protect Section 230); the harmful impacts of censorship on individuals, companies, technology, and society; and how the federal government coerces private platforms to censor disfavored speech—a practice known as “jawboning.” The Facebook Oversight Board cited their comments twice in a recent decision not to censor edited videos of President Biden. Huddleston and Inserra made the case that banning simple editing would pose grave dangers to legitimate political speech.

Inserra and Huddleston bolster Cato’s existing free speech team, which includes Emily Ekins, Cato vice president and director of polling; John Samples, Cato vice president; Will Duffield, now an adjunct scholar with a focus on AI policy; and Erec Smith, research fellow.

Smith focuses on the rhetoric of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy as well as the role of rhetoric in a free, pluralistic, and civil society. A former diversity officer tasked with leading diversity and inclusion trainings, Smith now actively speaks against current DEI programs, which he believes serve to perpetuate racism rather than alleviate it. “This ideology is infantilizing, it is anti-intellectual, and since I am a mature, intellectual person, it doesn’t align with me,” Smith told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in March 2024. Smith also serves as a professor at York College and is one of the cofounders of Free Black Thought, a nonprofit dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity within black communities. Smith appears frequently in the media, with recent appearances including Fox News Primetime, CNN, and Dr. Phil.

The US government is violating the privacy rights of millions of Americans by illegally surveilling them without a warrant. Since 2019, Cato has filed hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and dozens of FOIA lawsuits to uncover information regarding questionable or outright illegal activities by government agencies. In February 2024, John Greenewald, founder of the FOIA repository known as the Black Vault, posted that in response to a FOIA request seeking the latest version of the FBI’s FOIA “vexsome filer” list, the only organization publicly identified was the Cato Institute. Cato senior fellow Patrick Eddington touted the listing as a “badge of honor.”

In February 2024, Eddington filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) to uncover audits on the use of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA permits surveillance of foreign nationals outside the country without a warrant, but in the process of surveilling foreigners, the program collects the communications of Americans, creating a massive database flagrantly tapped into by government officials. Eddington’s lawsuit, which preceded the April reauthorization deadline for Section 702, became necessary because the DOJ did not reply to his June 2023 FOIA request for these audits.

Eddington’s work shines a spotlight on the urgency of the situation. “The people of our country are demonstrably and dangerously less free from government surveillance abuses.… And laws like the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act are key reasons why,” Eddington told the Washington Examiner in February 2024.

A free society must be built upon the rule of law, including a just and effective criminal justice system. America’s Founders took great care in designing a justice system that would befit a free society. Today their vision is in tatters, and the result has been disastrous. Our justice system suffers not only from mass incarceration but mis‐incarceration—we punish too many people for relatively trivial misconduct while a shocking percentage of murders, robberies, and violent assaults go unsolved and unpunished. Cato advocates a radical return to the justice system enframed in our Founding documents.

The Founders made the right to a trial by jury the cornerstone of their justice system. Indeed, the US Constitution devotes more words to the subject of jury trials than to any other right. Now more than 95 percent of all criminal convictions are obtained through plea bargains—that is, supposedly voluntary confessions. Cato aims to raise awareness of the key role that jury trials should play in our justice system and promote ways to counter coercive plea bargaining.

In 2023, Clark Neily, Cato senior vice president for legal studies, served as a member of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) plea bargaining task force, which published a report on how to reform coercive plea bargaining. George Will featured Cato and the ABA report in a March Washington Post column, writing:

Cato’s criminal justice scholars have also continued to lead the conversation on qualified immunity, a doctrine that enables police and other government officials to avoid accountability for violating citizens’ rights. Former research fellow Jay Schweikert testified virtually in January about qualified immunity before the Washington State House of Representatives’ Committee on Civil Rights and Judiciary, and Cato fellow Radley Balko discussed police misconduct on CNN, on PBS, and in the New York Times.

Cato’s first-ever digital storytelling feature, “How Qualified Immunity Hurts Law Enforcement,” was selected as an honoree for a Webby Award in the “Best Individual Editorial Feature—Individual/Brand/Organization”category. The Webby Awards are the most prestigious awards for websites and online content. Cato’s feature made the case that qualified immunity’s arbitrary legal formulation goes far beyond protecting police officers’ ability to do their job—it provides cover for bad officers who violate the very rights they are meant to protect.