The Center is home to an incredible faculty and host to the top minds at the intersection of law, science, and technology. But we also attract the brightest student scholars around; you should meet them.
Jordan Alexander Ross Brunner
Class of 2018
Hometown: Mesa, Arizona
Education: B.S. Political Science, Arizona State University
Jordan is a third-year law student with a concentration in national security law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He is the Senior Executive Editor of Jurimetrics: The Journal of Law, Science and Technology and was previously the president of the Law and Science Student Association. He is a contributor to Lawfare, a prominent website published in cooperation with the Brookings Institution devoted to serious discussion of issues at the intersection of national security and law. He has also contributed excellent analysis on the Internet of Things and surveillance in the connected age for this blog.
Jordan recently published Comment in Jurimetrics on President Obama’s declaration of a cybersecurity national emergency – The (Cyber) New Normal: Dissecting President Obama’s Cyber National Emergency. He was intrigued by the Obama administration’s response to cyber threats, from Stuxnet and the theft of F-35 fighter jet designs to catfishing and election interference:
The way in which the Obama administration handled these problems, both on the national and the international level, was of intense interest to me. What was most ironic to me was that, given Obama’s rhetoric of advancing the rule of law and being precise in its use, the language use in the executive order he wrote to declare a national emergency surrounding cyberspace was (1) overbroad, and (2) actually created a situation that the laws it relied on was designed to prevent – namely, the creation of a permanent national emergency. And yet, even given the potentially draconian effects of the EO, it is understandable that it would be written that way – after all, when you are dealing with terrorists and criminals, it is often better to be overbroad than underbroad. And ultimately, the fault lies with Congress for granting the president such broad power in the first place. My comment, I hope, attempts to draw attention to all of these trends.
Before law school, Jordan was a Research Fellow with the New America Foundation/ASU Center for the Future of War, where he researched cybersecurity, cyber war, and cyber conflict alongside Shane Harris, author of @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex. He graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with a B.S. in Political Science. Jordan chose to go to law school because he was interested in how the law impacted technology and national security, especially when it came to foreign affairs.
3 Fun Facts:
- Youngest in his class (22 years old)
- First encountered ASU through an elementary school violin program
- Writes poetry for fun