LENS sharpens its focus on 9/11
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| Robinson Everett and Scott Silliman |
Interest in national security issues exploded after 9/11, and Scott Silliman, executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, is gratified that LENS and the Law School have been able to provide timely and relevant classes, commentary, and conferences at a profoundly important time in the nation’s history.
Each of LENS’ three annual interdisciplinary conferences since 9/11 have focused on related issues–“Security Challenges After September 11: National and International Perspectives” and “Confronting Iraq: Legal and Policy Considerations” (both co-sponsored by the Program in Public Law), and “U.S.-Canadian Security Relations: Partnership or Predicament?” This spring, LENS will collaborate with the Program in Public Law on a conference on terrorism. For the past eight years, Silliman has also organized a national security conference in Washington, D.C. for the American Bar Association.
He notes that LENS is now expanding its scholarship, by commissioning works on pertinent national security topics. The first in this occasional series, a monograph by former CIA Inspector General Britt Snider entitled, “Congressional Oversight of Intelligence: Some Reflections on the Last 25 Years,” was published last year.
“We felt it was particularly important in light of the ongoing debate–the whole oversight of the CIA and the intelligence community is vitally important. For instance, we now know that there were CIA operatives in the Abu Ghraib prison. Who was watching them and what they were doing? That’s what [Snider’s] monograph addresses.”
Silliman’s own scholarship is currently focused on the issues of military commissions and use of pre-emptive force. He brings a perspective to his subject informed by a 25-year career as an Air Force attorney. In his last command before coming to Duke Law School in 1993, he supervised deployment of all Air Force attorneys and legal support staff incident to the first Persian Gulf War.
Now teaching national security law at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina Central University Law Schools as well as at Duke, Silliman often starts his classes by “talking to the headlines.”
“Something of importance has always happened since the class last met, and the principles and cases we study can readily be used to analyze what’s going on in the world.”
Silliman is regularly asked by reporters to interpret those events for the larger public. Whether the questions involve courts-martial, military commissions, or whether members of the National Guard can avoid being called into active service, Silliman is known for providing thoughtful answers that are both authoritative and to the point. He welcomes the opportunity.
“We have found our greatest impact for LENS in the media. You make an immediate impact on CNN or NPR. We try to inform the debate, not steer it, so that viewers and listeners will at least understand the issues and be informed enough to make their own judgments.”
Robinson Everett, who founded LENS in 1993, shares this view.
“From the start we were anxious to engage in programs that would expand public understanding beyond the law schools. I think that today national security and related issues are among the major concerns of people throughout the country. Once people go out on the street and have informal conversations about important issues in America today, they are going to focus on issues of national security: For example, are we subject to bio-terror, how do our immigration policies relate to national security, and what should we do to change those policies one way or another?”
Although the focus of national security law has changed with 9/11, Everett has long known that many important issues were present.
A member of the Duke Law faculty since the 1950s, Everett offered seminars on military justice at Duke and UNC Law Schools for many years. Then, when he became chief judge of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals (now the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces), he switched to the broader subject of national security law, and taught a seminar on this topic at Duke through the 1980s. After his retirement as chief judge in 1990, he also offered seminars at Wake Forest and UNC Law Schools.
“There was obviously a lot of interest in the subject, so I thought wouldn’t it be good if Duke, with its various centers and institutes, had a center on national security law–and I set about getting one organized.”
Everett found an ally in the endeavor in his mother. Having been one of the first women to graduate from UNC Law School–she was first in her class and had the top bar admission score in 1920–Kathrine Everett also had close ties to Duke Law; in addition to her son’s faculty position, her late husband had been in the first graduating class of Trinity Law School, and she had been awarded an honorary degree from Duke Law in 1972.
“My mother wanted to show her appreciation, and set up a trust for the benefit of the two law schools–Duke and UNC–leaving me the discretion to decide how to use the funding. It was consistent with her wishes to set up LENS–we could be the lens through which people can see issues of national security that have legal and ethical implications,” says Everett.
Terrorism was not a significant subject in national security law when LENS started, though.
“There were concerns about ‘rogue states’ like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Libya which were creating hazards for others. There were coming into being some international initiatives that affected national security law, such as various treaties designed to prevent international crimes like genocide and torture. The International Criminal Court [from which the U.S. has withdrawn support] brought us into the field of international crime–how to define it and what to do about it.
“Those topics are still important, but horizons have broadened considerably. For example, some issues have become crucial–[such] as what constitutes torture in interrogating prisoners and as to the authority of military commissions, other military tribunals, and international tribunals under the law of war.”
Through LENS, Duke Law School has a special opportunity to take a leadership role as national security issues gain prominence, Everett notes, offering special praise for Silliman’s leadership in programming and frequent media appearances.
“I think [LENS] is one of the most significant things that’s occurred here at Duke, when you get right down to it.”