Cato Video

American policing is changing. Emerging technologies provide new methods both for police accountability and surveillance capabilities. Law enforcement scholars and practitioners continue to develop innovative strategies to address crime and disorder. In many cities, police agencies are wrestling with how to increase public safety while respecting the dignity of individuals, particularly in minority communities.

An array of law enforcement experts explore these issues and more at the Cato Institute's conference "Policing in America."

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/policing-america.

American policing is changing. Emerging technologies provide new methods both for police accountability and surveillance capabilities. Law enforcement scholars and practitioners continue to develop innovative strategies to address crime and disorder. In many cities, police agencies are wrestling with how to increase public safety while respecting the dignity of individuals, particularly in minority communities.

An array of law enforcement experts explore these issues and more at the Cato Institute's conference "Policing in America."

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/policing-america.

Economist and historian Robert Higgs has advanced our understanding of the causes, means, and effects of government power and the need to deconstruct statism and re-establish institutions that protect and advance liberty, prosperity, and peace. His work has engaged such issues as health care, the environment, law and economics, urban development, race discrimination, agriculture, immigration, war and peace, economic development, government spending and debt, welfare, money and banking, presidential power, civil liberties, the Great Depression, science, unemployment, and far more.

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/taking-stand-reflections-life-liberty-economy.

The REAL ID Act is a law that Congress passed without hearings in 2005, which sought to make state driver licensing into a national ID system. The law tries to coerce state compliance with federal identification standards by threatening that the Transportation Security Administration will refuse driver's licenses and IDs from noncompliant states when Americans go to travel. This fall, a Department of Homeland Security campaign to stir up fears that the TSA will refuse drivers licenses at airports across America was so successful that passport offices in New Mexico were swamped, and a DHS official recently published a piece in the Albuquerque Journal backtracking on a widely reported January 2016 deadline for state compliance.

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/real-id-fear-federalism-us-national-id-program.

The way human history is taught is misleading, argues Matt Ridley. Far too much emphasis is placed on the "top-down twitch" — the belief that change comes from on high: the politicians who run countries, scientists who discover truths, inventors who make breakthroughs, men and women who head companies. In fact, Ridley says, bottom-up progress through evolution is far more crucial. From the natural forces that formed the universe and human life itself to the cultural mechanisms that have shaped everything from our educational system and global financial structure, to the products we buy and the language we speak, "evolution is far more common, and far more influential, than most people recognize."

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/evolution-everything-how-new-ideas-emerge.

Cato's 33rd Annual Monetary Conference brings together leading policymakers and scholars to rethink monetary policy after more than six years of unconventional central bank policy following the 2008 global financial crisis. Since the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a convergence of monetary policies by major central banks aimed at keeping benchmark interest rates near zero and supporting asset prices in the hope of stimulating economic growth. Yet global growth is still sluggish and the risk of asset bubbles is mounting. The distinguished speakers at this conference will consider the risks of unconventional monetary policy, the steps that need to be taken to normalize policy, and the fundamental question of rules versus discretion in the conduct of monetary policy.

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/33rd-annual-monetary-conference.

Abigail Fisher's challenge to the University of Texas's use of racial preferences in admissions decisions returns to the Supreme Court. The Court previously intervened in 2012, when it reversed the Fifth Circuit and directed the lower court to scrutinize more closely the university's justification for its use of race. The lower court reaffirmed its previous ruling, and the Supreme Court took the case again—surprising many observers, who now anticipate a landmark decision that could change the face of affirmative action.

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/will-supreme-court-end-affirmative-action-preview-fisher-v-university-texas-austin-eve-oral.

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/does-american-criminal-justice-system-need-overhaul

Judge Alex Kozinski recently published a scathing critique of the American criminal justice system in an article titled "Criminal Law 2.0." According to Judge Kozinski, we should be alarmed by the number of people who have been exonerated by DNA testing. That testing has exposed a system that is rife with false confessions, unreliable eyewitnesses, junk forensics, and misbehaving prosecutors, among other problems.

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/itc-digital-trade-clearcorrect-decision.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is authorized by Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to restrict the importation of articles that infringe patents and other intellectual property rights. In its ClearCorrect decision, which involves clear plastic teeth straighteners, a 5–1 ITC majority found that electronic data transmissions also qualify as articles under Section 337. A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently issued a 2-1 verdict against the ITC, but that split ruling may be subject to further review.

Does the ITC's decision in ClearCorrect reflect a correct reading of the statute, or has the majority gotten it wrong? If the judicial system eventually agrees with the Commission, will the precedent have only limited effect, or will Internet freedom be compromised by potential ITC scrutiny of imported digital data?

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations were launched to great fanfare in mid-2013 with the pronouncement that a comprehensive deal would be reached by the end of 2014 on a "single tank of gas." But after more than two years and 10 rounds of negotiations, an agreement is nowhere in sight and substantive differences remain between the parties. Despite a retreat from the original level of ambition, skepticism is mounting on both sides of the Atlantic that a deal will be reached anytime soon. What are the prospects for fulfilling the promise of a comprehensive trade and investment deal between the United States and the European Union?

View the full event here: https://www.cato.org/events/will-transatlantic-trade-investment-partnership-live-its-promise