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Professor Shawn Boyne took part in a panel discussion titled, "Edward Snowden: Patriot, Traitor, Whistleblower, Spy?" at the 2015 Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conference.

Many commentators in the U.S. have called for Snowden to return to the U.S. and face trial so that the costs and merits of his disclosure may be debated in a court of law. However, Professor Boyne has argued that because the Espionage Act does not include a "disclosure in the public interest defense," any trial would not achieve that goal as prosecutors would merely have to show that the disclosures harmed U.S. interests.

Other discussants on the panel included Dean Gregory Bowman, West Virginia University College of Law; Dean Jon Garon, Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad College of Law; Professor Timothy McDonnell, Washington and Lee College of Law; Professor Richard Meyer, Mississippi College of Law; Professor David Ritchie, Mercer University Law School; and Professor Karen Sokol, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. The panel was organized and chaired by Professor Patrick Hugg, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

Professor Boyne is a former prosecuting attorney and practiced for several years as a defense attorney before pursuing her career in academia. She is a scholar of comparative law who has previously presented her work at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and Washington & Lee's School of Law, as well as in Austria, Germany, and England. Professor Boyne teaches a seminar in Comparative National Security Law at IU McKinney and serves as co-chair of the Global Crisis Leadership Forum. She is one of the founding members of the Comparative Law Professors blog. Her latest book, The German Prosecution Service: Guardians of the Law?, was published in 2013 by Springer Publishing.