Roger Hertog Program on Law and National Security | Columbia Law School
Past Events
ROGER HERTOG PROGRAM SPEAKER SERIES
The Roger Hertog Program's Speaker Series in fall and spring brings together scholars and experts.
December 4, 2012 | 1:10 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Room 102
Lifting the Veil: The Challenge of Covering Secret Government Activities
Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, New York Times national security journalists
Scott Shane is a reporter covering intelligence and national security in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he has written about drone strikes, the debate over torture, the terrorist threat, the anthrax investigation, WikiLeaks, government secrecy and many other issues. He was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun from 1983 to 2004, covering a range of beats from courts to medicine and writing major series on brain surgery, schizophrenia, a drug corner, guns and crime, the eavesdropping National Security Agency and other topics. Mr. Shane was The Sun's Moscow correspondent from 1988 to 1991 and wrote a book on the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union.
Charlie Savage is a Washington correspondent for The New York Times. He is known for his work on presidential power and other legal policy matters. Before joining The Times, Mr. Savage covered national legal affairs for the Boston Globe from 2003 to 2008. He received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2007 for his coverage of presidential signing statements for the Globe. Other awards he earned while at the Globe include the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. Mr. Savage's book about the growth of executive power, “Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy,” was named one of the best books of 2007 by both Slate and Esquire. The book also received the bipartisan Constitution Project's inaugural Award for Constitutional Commentary, the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
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November 28, 2012 | 2:50 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Room 104
A Conversation with the Chief Prosecutor of United States Military Commissions
Brigadier General Mark Martins
Brigadier General Mark Martins is the Chief Prosecutor for the United States in cases alleging violations of the law of war and lead trial counsel in the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and four other accused perpetrators of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Martins outlined major provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2009 - which reformed a system much criticized when established in 2001 by presidential order - and addressed the due process protections, constitutional authority, established sources of law, narrowness of jurisdiction, oversight by United States federal civilian courts, compliance with international legal obligations, public trial requirements, and transparency measures that characterize the reformed military commissions. Martins also addressed continuing challenges to the reformed system's legitimacy, suggested what will be necessary to surmount perceptions of "victor's justice," and offered thoughts on the future of efforts to hold al Qaeda and associated forces accountable under law. Read More
January 22, 2012 | 4:30 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Case Lounge, 7th Floor
The Charles Fabrikant Colloquium on National Security Law and Policy
Vice Admiral James Houck, Judge Advocate General, U.S. Navy
As a guest speaker in the Roger Hertog Program on Law and National Security, co-chaired by Professor Matthew Waxman, and of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies, directed by Professor Ben Liebman, Vice Admiral Houck, Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy discussed maritime law from the perspective of national security and as one aspect of U.S.-China relations. Read More
November 29, 2011 | 4:30 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Case Lounge, 7th Floor
A Transatlantic View of Shared National Security Legal Issues
Daniel Bethlehem, Former Legal Adviser, U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Daniel Bethlehem is currently a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School for the fall 2011 term. Following a five-year tenure, from May 2006 to May 2011, as principal legal adviser for the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), he returned to private practice at the London Bar, where he specializes in public international law. In this role, he acts as counsel and adviser, and sits as arbitrator and on inquiry panels. Having practiced at the London Bar from 1990 until his appointment to the FCO in 2006, Bethlehem has extensive advisory, litigation, and arbitration experience representing states, international and nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and individuals on issues across the full breadth of public international law as well as aspects of European Union law and international and European human rights law.
He has appeared frequently before a wide range of international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, WTO and regional trade panels, ad hoc international arbitration panels, and other international dispute settlement mechanisms. Bethlehem has similarly appeared before all levels of English courts and tribunals, from Employment Tribunals (addressing issues of state immunity) through to the High Court, Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court. He has also appeared before the EU courts in Luxembourg and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
November 15, 2011 | 4:30 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Case Lounge, 7th Floor
Advising the White House: Exploring the Role of the NSC Legal Adviser
Mary DeRosa, Former Deputy White House Counsel and Former Legal Adviser, National Security Council
Mary DeRosa currently serves as Alternate Representative of the United States to the 66th UN General Assembly. DeRosa served as Deputy White House Counsel and National Security Council Legal Adviser from January 2009 until June 2011. Before that, she was Chief Counsel for National Security for the Senate Judiciary Committee, working for the Chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy. She has also been a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served on the staff of the Clinton Administration National Security Council as Legal Adviser and Deputy Legal Adviser, and was Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. Before joining the government, Ms. DeRosa was in private practice at Arnold & Porter. More Information
November 8, 2011 | 4:30 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Case Lounge, 7th Floor
The State Department Legal Adviser: Why He Doesn’t Always Get What He Wants
John Bellinger, Former Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State and the National Security Council
John B. Bellinger III is a partner in the international and national security practices of Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, DC. He advises sovereign governments and companies on a variety of international law and U.S. national security law issues. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Bellinger served as The Legal Adviser for the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from April 2005 to January 2009. He previously managed Secretary Rice’s Senate confirmation and co-directed her State Department transition team. Mr. Bellinger served from February 2001 to January 2005 as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House, where he was Dr. Rice’s principal lawyer when she was National Security Adviser. He previously served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department during the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), as Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1996), and as Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster (1988-1991).
Mr. Bellinger received his A.B. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1982, his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986, and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1991. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Society of International Law, the American Council on Germany, and the American Law Institute. He is also one of four U.S. members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. More Information
November 1, 2011 | 4:30 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Case Lounge, 7th Floor
National Security and the News Media
Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, national security journalists
Barton Gellman is an author, journalist and visiting lecturer at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. During 21 years as a local, national and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, he twice shared the Pulitzer Prize. His books include Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was named a New York Times Best Book of 2008, and Contending with Kennan: Toward a Philosophy of American Power. Since 2010 Gellman has been contributing editor at large at TIME magazine, where he writes about government and national security, along with the Counterspy blog on digital privacy. He is based at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, where he is a fellow in the Liberty and National Security program.
Dafna Linzer is a senior reporter at ProPublica. Her coverage of Guantanamo and detention in the Obama Presidency won the 2010 Overseas Press Club award for General Excellence and was honored by the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award. She was a national security reporter for The Washington Post, covering intelligence and nonproliferation, from 2004 to 2008. Her coverage of the Iranian nuclear issue won the United Nations 2005 Gold Medal award for international reporting. Before joining the Post, she spent ten years as a foreign correspondent for Associated Press. Based in Jerusalem, New York, and the United Nations, she reported from more than a dozen countries covering terrorism, nonproliferation, and conflict. Her reporting from Baghdad, on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, won national attention and praise, ending with her report that the fruitless hunt had quietly come to an end. She lives in New York City with her family. More Information
October 4, 2011 | 4:30 p.m. | Jerome Greene Hall, Case Lounge, 7th Floor
The CIA: Lawless Rogue or Regulated Business?
Stephen W. Preston, General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency
Stephen W. Preston is the chief legal officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers. He has held numerous other high-level national security–related positions, including general counsel of the Department of the Navy and principal deputy general counsel and acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense. More Information
April 4, 2011
The Charles Fabrikant Colloquium on National Security Law and Policy
Brett McGurk, Current Scholar-in-Residence, former senior official in the Bush administration closely involved with issues in Iraq and Afghanistan
“If [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi were to go tomorrow, that doesn’t really solve the problem,” McGurk told participants recently at the Charles Fabrikant Colloquium in National Security Law and Policy. “You need a political strategy to accompany any military intervention. What comes after Gadhafi? Nobody has really said.”
McGurk had a close-up view from both Washington and Baghdad of the many policy missteps in Iraq. He served on the National Security Council, first as director for Iraq, and then later as a Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served as a senior Iraq advisor during the first year of the Obama administration and again in Baghdad over the last quarter of 2010. More Information
March 28, 2011
The Charles Fabrikant Colloquium on National Security Law and Policy
Bryan Cunningham, Cyber-security, former C.I.A. officer and Deputy Legal Adviser at the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice.
There is no consensus among government and private cyber-security experts about whether terrorists or hackers could launch a cyber-attack with such precision and power that it could bring down a regional electrical grid or disrupt the air traffic control system.
But even without a digital Pearl Harbor, “there is little dispute that cyber-warfare remains a serious threat, and one that government and industry must do more to combat, attorney Bryan Cunningham recently told participants in the Charles Fabrikant Colloquium in National Security Law and Policy at Columbia Law School. More Information
February 21, 2011
The Charles Fabrikant Colloquium on National Security Law and Policy
Judge James Baker, Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
As a guest speaker in the Roger Hertog Program on Law and National Security, co-directed by Professor Matthew Waxman, Baker talked about his experience working in the National Security Council and serving as a legal adviser to President Bill Clinton. In 2000, he was appointed by Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which is composed of five civilian judges. The Court has appellate jurisdiction over cases arising under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. More Information
November 30, 2010 | 4:30 p.m. | 103 Jerome Greene Hall
The Role of the Intelligence Community in Addressing Homegrown Violent Extremism
Robert S. Litt, General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Robert S. Litt serves as only the second general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a position he has held since June 2009. In this capacity, he provides legal advice to the director of national intelligence and his staff, and assists the director in ensuring that the U.S. intelligence community carries out its responsibilities in compliance with the Constitution and laws of the United States. Before joining the ODNI, Mr. Litt was a partner with Arnold & Porter LLP. From 1993 to 1999, he worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division and then as the principal associate deputy attorney general. More Information
November 2, 2010 | 4:30 p.m. | 103 Jerome Green Hall
Lawyering for the Defense Department and the National Command Authority
The Honorable Jeh Charles Johnson ’82, General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense
Jeh C. Johnson ’82 has had a distinguished career in both the private and public sectors. In 2009, he returned to public service as the chief legal officer of the Department of Defense and the legal adviser to the Secretary of Defense. He built upon his early career as assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York to become a successful trial lawyer and a partner in the New York office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. From 1998 to 2001, Mr. Johnson served as general counsel for the Department of the Air Force. More Information
October 19, 2010 | 4:15 p.m. | 103 Jerome Greene Hall
Law and Modern Military Operations
Brigadier General Mark S. Martins, U.S. Army, Commander, Rule of Law Field Force–Afghanistan
Brigadier General Mark S. Martins assumed command of the newly created Rule of Law Field Force–Afghanistan in September 2010. Previously, he served as the deputy commanding general of Joint Task Force 435, which was charged with reforming U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan. A judge advocate for the U.S. Army, Brigadier General Martins was deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with duty in Baghdad as counsel to Multinational Security Transition Command–Iraq, and as staff judge advocate for Multi-National Force–Iraq. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and a Rhodes scholar, as well as a graduate of Harvard Law School. More Information
October 11, 2010 | 4 p.m. | 105 Jerome Greene Hall
Reducing Polarity: the Obama Administration and National Security Law
Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State
Harold Hongju Koh, one of the nation’s leading experts on public and private international law, national security law, and human rights, serves as the 22nd legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State. On leave from Yale Law School, Mr. Koh is the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law and the school’s former dean. From 1998 to 2001, he served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, and he previously served on the secretary of state’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. More Information
Made possible by the generosity of The Maurice Rosenberg Memorial Fund
October 5, 2010 | 4:15 p.m. | 103 Jerome Greene Hall
The Role of the Intelligence Community in Addressing Homegrown Violent Extremism
David S. Kris, Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division, U.S. Department of Justice
David S. Kris heads the Justice Department’s National Security Division, which is responsible for counterterrorism, counterespionage, and intelligence efforts. As associate deputy attorney general from 2000 to 2003, Mr. Kris’ unclassified duties included supervising the government’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, representing the Justice Department at the National Security Council, and assisting the attorney general in conducting oversight of the U.S. intelligence community. In his talk, Mr. Kris will examine the recent history of U.S. counterterrorism strategy; provide a conceptual framework for thinking about how law enforcement can disrupt plots, incapacitate terrorists, and collect intelligence; and describe how law enforcement has been used in coordination with other vital counterterrorism methods. More Information
September 21, 2010 | 6:15 p.m. | 102 Jerome Greene Hall
Contemporary Issues in National Security
Gregory Craig, former White House Counsel; Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Gregory Craig is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Washington, D.C., where he chairs the firm’s Global Policy and Litigation Strategy Group. From 2009 to 2010, Mr. Craig served as counsel to President Barack Obama. Prior to this position, he was a partner at the law firm of Williams & Connolly LLP. As a trial lawyer, Mr. Craig participated in many high-profile cases, representing prominent elected officials, private individuals, and corporations. He has served as senior adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy for foreign policy and national security affairs, and as director of the policy planning staff in the State Department. In late 1998, President Bill Clinton selected him to serve as special counsel on the legal team that represented the president at his impeachment trial.As a senior foreign policy adviser in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Mr. Craig played the role of Senator John McCain in preparations leading up to the three presidential debates. More Information