Roger Hertog Program on Law and National Security | Columbia Law School

Faculty Research and Activities

The Roger Hertog Program on Law and National Security has also supported the scholarship of our national security experts, and has supported them as they have engaged in a range of activities to enhance the impact of their ideas.  

Matthew Waxman’s scholarship in 2010-11 has focused on the domestic and international legal aspects of cyber-warfare and cyber-terrorism, and on the role of state and local police in counter-terrorism intelligence efforts.  His forthcoming articles, “National Security Federalism in the Age of Terror” and “Cyber-Attacks and the Use of Force: Back to the Future of the U.N. Charter,” will be published in the Stanford Law Review and Yale Journal of International Law, respectively.  The Columbia Society of International Law, a student organization, honored Professor Waxman with its annual award this year for his outstanding teaching and mentoring.  In addition to his academic work, Professor Waxman serves as a member of the advisory committee to the U.S. government's High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, an interagency group that handles interrogation of senior and other special terrorism suspects and develops knowledge and best practices regarding interrogation.  He also serves as Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law & Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in that capacity he convenes and moderates roundtable discussions on foreign policy challenges and he regularly briefs journalists and publishes commentary on national security law issues.  He, like Professor Philip C. Bobbitt, also is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.

In 2011-2012, Professor Waxman will continue his ground-breaking research on state and local governments and national security and intelligence, and on the future of the U.N. Security Council and its ability to deal with emerging security threats. He is also collaborating with Google Ideas on a series of roundtable discussions about information technology and U.S. national security and foreign policy. This summer (2011) he will be speaking at a major conference in Dublin to study violent radicalization and de-radicalization, which will include former members of extremist movements and terrorist organizations who have subsequently eschewed armed violence. Professor Waxman will continue his work with the Council on Foreign Relations, where he will convene and moderate a series of roundtable discussions on sovereignty and U.S. foreign policy, and with the Hoover Institution, at which he will be speaking next year about his work on domestic intelligence. Professor Waxman will also continue to serve on the experts group convened by the American Society of International Law to study international security issues such as the use of lethal force against al Qaida leaders abroad, and on the International Task Force on Terrorism, Democracy and the Law to study and teach comparative approaches to national security law dilemmas, including giving presentations on U.S. counter-terrorism law and strategy to an international audience in Israel. 

During 2010-11, Trevor Morrison published an article in the Columbia Law Review which focused on the role of executive branch precedent in the work of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, including issues relevant to national security.  In May 2011 he is publishing in the Harvard Law Review an essay critiquing a new book by Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School about legal interpretation within the executive branch, and especially about how that interpretation works and should work in national security crises. In addition, in February 2011, Professor Morrison lectured to a new set of military personnel just beginning their tours at the detention facilities in Afghanistan.  He also served on the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law, which met in June and December 2010.  In January 2011, he spent one week in Afghanistan at the invitation of the U.S. inter-agency task force responsible for detention and other rule-of-law operations in that country.  Professor Morrison observed detention review board proceedings at Bagram Air Base for three days, and provided his evaluation of the proceedings to the military and civilian leaders of the task force.  More broadly, he has continued to contribute in various ways to the ongoing debates within and outside the U.S. government over issues of detention policy.  For example, in April 2011 he spoke at a major national security conference at Duke University on issues relating to the law of indefinite detention.  He has continued to serve on the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law, which met in June and December 2010.  Along with Professor Waxman, he has participated in a series of roundtable discussions convened by the American Society of International Law to bring together current and former government officials, legal academics, and human rights lawyers to discuss pressing issues of international law and terrorism.   Also with Professor Waxman, Professor Morrison has participated in an international working group consisting of scholars from Israel, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, and other countries, focusing on various legal and policy issues relating to those nations' attempts to combat terrorism.  The group met in Germany in June and in Washington, DC in November.

In 2011-2012, Professor Morrison will continue working on a long-term project on a framework for thinking about the relationship between military detention and criminal prosecutions.  In addition, in summer 2011, he will begin work on a new project examining the extent to which judicial treatment of the scope of executive power over national security and other matters should be responsive to changes in policy from one presidential administration to the next. Relatedly, he is also collaborating on a new project that will seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of the role that historical practice should play in determining the scope of executive power and in answering related separation of powers issues. Beyond formal scholarship, Professor Morrison will continue to serve on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and on the above-mentioned roundtable of experts convened by the American Society of International Law to discuss international law and security issues. And he and Professor Waxman will continue to participate in the above-described International Task Force on Terrorism, Democracy and the Law, through which they will travel to Israel in December to present work on U.S. counter-terrorism and detention law.

Professor Philip C. Bobbitt's principal scholarly focus during 2010-11 has been to produce a draft of his new book on Machiavelli. His most recent lectures were at the Bryant Lecture at the British Library on the U.S./U.K. defense and intelligence relationship; and the Donahue Lecture at Suffolk University in Boston on why it is appropriate to speak of a "war" against terror.  In the autumn, he gave a series of lectures at the New York Historical Society on the history and evolution of terrorism; and in London gave talks at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Wilton Park; and in Washington gave a lecture, War and Statecraft, at the National Defense University.  This June he will deliver the annual Changing Character of War lecture at All Souls College, Oxford.  Professor Bobbitt currently serves as a member of the Commission on the Continuity of Government; the Hoover Institution’s Task Force on Law and National Security; and the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law, and on the board of the Institute for Security and Resiliency Studies at University College, London.

In 2011-2012, Professor Bobbitt will reprise his talk on "war" against terror at the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival. In the coming year he will have finished his Machiavelli book (he just finished a draft which he will send to the publisher later this month), and will turn to three books he has promised Oxford University Press on the constitution (two are new editions of previous books) and will begin research on a book about the U.S. role in managing global affairs in the 21st century; and complete writing a book on scenario planning.

All of our faculty in this area will continue their frequent consultation with key members in governments and think tanks in the formulation of national security policy.