is the subject of this book and the role of international law in the shaping of foreign policy. together paul and i after leaving the state department created and on government organization called public international law and policy group that paul will tell you more about in this is our second book together, the 13th book that i have written and i am looking very much forward to telling you about it this evening. >> thank you pure i will do a quick 32nd introduction. my name is paul williams, professor at american university both in the law school and school of international service and it is a great pleasure to be back in cleveland again. michael in fights me out every now and then to give a talk or participate in his conferences and to exchange ideas with his colleagues at case western so it's a pleasure to be here from american university. ..

the always on a lawyerly peace process of the constitution but they don't want to depress your right to get out of the box into the political row. and they often tied to do their lawyer and say, is that real law or is that just virtua to habited your lawyer is telling you at fossil fuel like i have to do it? a lot of those questions were what pushed us in the direction of this book in the role of law in "shaping foreign policy in

times of shaping foreign policy. >> a major impact in the world. there is a huge earthquake in port-au-prince in haiti. and just now they've announced the casualties of that were over 100,000 people. i think it is appropriate that we begin with maybe a moment of silence for rethink about the poor souls and think about how we can help out in haiti. >> unturned okay. so we have been wrestling with this question is international loverly law. when i talk reverser international lawsuit institution of the first question that we address the class. if you are someone who took philosophy classes as an undergraduate camille remembered that there are several schools of thought about international law. others lost in the realist school that those donations never obeyed the law because it's not real law.

there's a hobbesian utilitarian approach that says that sometimes nations of the international law, but only when it is convenient for them or when it serves their best interest. there's a kantian liberalist turned, which says that countries will better obey international law on with a legal obligation or compliance poll. and finally, there's a dump and process that says that nations can be induced to obey for encouragement and prodding of other nations. in the u.s. government, they are debates, too, about whether international law is related law are not. in turn the last 20 years of the united states has become the last remaining sole superpower, there has been a temptation to become exceptional list, a temptation to say we have the strength economically and militarily in international law isn't convenient for us. it's a chemistry we don't need

and we don't want. and in that context to quotes from people like john bolton who was a deputy secretary of state and the permanent representative to the united nations during the bush administration. john bolton said that follows, international law is not lost into a series of physical and moral arrangements t-tango fall on on their own merits and anything else is simply theology and superstition masquerading as law. and then you have had a couple years later homologue distilled the government taking a step further, saying quote, it's a big mistake for us to create any validity to international law because over the long term the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the united states. in a book that came out just a couple years ago, harvard law professor, jack goldsmith, together with eric poser from chicago law school, wrote a very

long thesis trying to disprove decades of international law is real law. they've been there but in international law is just politics and it's no more unlawful to contravene a treaty or a rule of international law then it would be to disregard a nonbinding letter of intent. so there are those in the government to feel international law is not real law. and this is a big debate and it's important especially in the war and terrorism because there were those who thought that the united states needed to do whatever it have to do to protect us from the terrorist threats after 9/11. and there were those who said that in times of conflict, the loss must be silent. but generally, american silicate international law that way. and this became a problem for those who wanted to take that position. how do you convince the president to ignore international law for the general population thinks international law is real law. and here and across, who was the

chief counsel of the nsc during an earlier bush administration and later during the most recent bush administration was chief counsel to the u.n. permanent representative to the u.n. he said, this is very fascinating and it's a problem for those who try to debunk international law. criticism of the united states and international blog rounds in specially notable because of the very nature of the u.s. as a country to find i law. that is part of the reason why the united states cannot long sustain foreign policies at odds with international law. in the end, he said, americans will not support such policies. the american people will ask, is it legal before they ask any other questions about foreign policy actions short of self defense against aggression. in the context of this huge debate, which is still raging. in fact, just last night on the job rochelle, a fellow by the name of john yoo who was the author of the white house

torture memos was talking about his new book which basically says international law is not real law the white house torture memos do not contravene law and the people who implemented them are not lawbreakers. in the context of all this we decided to say hey let's pause and try to find some empirical evidence. let's find out if policymakers on the inside really do proceed international law as real law. paul is going to tell you how we accomplished that. >> my very first day in the department of state and within a newly minted lawyer. i was dealing with the use of our portfolio at a time when yugoslavia was dissolving so what to buy to see my current, richard stallman. when i went to his opposite figure of a nuclear, right? if any are i said -- don't sit down. please send in the doorway. he was a chain smoker so i thought it was just being polite. he said, i am a lawyer free zone

office. i said richard, i'm your lawyer. yugoslavia's dissolving, want a little legal advice? and he said homology to do is tell me that if i don't listen to you i either have to go to jail or don't have to go to jail. i said richard, nobody ever goes to jail for violating public international law or u.n. security council resolutions. he said great, see you next year. and that was essentially the view of many of the foreign service officer clients that i was engaging with, which is don't come in as a lawyer. within the back of your mind which you want to do is have my job, d4 infers officer providing legal violence. when in fact it's not. it's mere moral authority. but over the next course of the year, not only did richard allow me to come into his office,

offer me a cigarette every now and then, he actually came to my office which he had trouble finding because he had never been down to the legal office on the fifth floor and started to seek out the lawyer's opinion. what do you do with the diet of the former yugoslavia? what do you do? croatia isn't in international recognition. we kind of want to recognize them but not right away. how do we use legal tools and mechanisms to promote our objectives? and so when michael and i were thinking years later. as a young lawyer you simply say yes, lot of finding, listen to me. later his academics are students raskin the questions. as academics, students don't listen to us. so we had to think about how do you get your mind into the black rocks of this relationship between international law. if you ask any international lawyer is binding. in foreign policy, which if you ask any foreign policy part to schneier is essentially binding so long as it consistent with my

foreign-policy objectives. so we thought we would bring together a ten former state department legal advisers, spanning from the carter administration all the way through to bush to them than we were eventually able to get a forward by harold koh who is currently a legal advisor in the obama administration and put them together in a very big room so there's lots of space between the democrats and republicans end of an administration and ask them, pick your top three crises and walk us through the role that international law played. in doing so, think about, was applying the law, was it something that the foreign service officers secretary of state president thought they were bound by? was it clear? this is something important. oftentimes international law is simply not that clear and so cannot be binding if it is not clear? did they have an obligation to speak law to power? did they simply advised that this is the law or did they say

this is the law and u.s. the president and the secretary of state have an obligation to follow this thought even if it constrains your foreign-policy object to is be the use of force, the recognition of country come the allocation of death. and finally, this was the most interesting question. who is their client? that he was paying a little of the legal officers in the department of state? the secretary of state? is that the president? is that the american people? give their client the greater good. or in some instances is their current international law which is evolving in martha's entity in the house relationship responsibility to that. would have also put together a panel of non-american legal advisers from russia, india, china, ethiopia and the united kingdom and asked them the exact same questions to have a comparison and contrast.

one reason in an alternate back to michael that we saw to actually go and ask a legal advisers, you know, it should be a social scientist at empirical research about ten people to talk to to actually have your data set for doing research on the role of law within the department of state. part of the reason is an mike alluded to this in the beginning when you look at the academic literature at the debate, law matters, lot doesn't matter, law should matter, law shouldn't matter. but they're surprisingly limited empirical evidence and one of the reasons is fall international law touches with their daily lives, very few people actually make or process that international law. state department has over 12,000 foreign service officers and specialists and they have 150 lawyers. all these questions are you keep hearing about caribbean about in the international united states is facing eyes out with by 12,000 trained foreign-policy specialists relying on a very,

very small internal law firm of under 150 lawyers. so now were going to share with you some of our findings of the study. some of them are bit counterintuitive. some of them are quite surprising and in some cases the legal advisers told us things that are in the book that has never been before recorded in history. so stay tuned. the first binding is this, if there is a spectrum between those lawyers to think the international law never is law and those who believe international law is really binding law and that the real kind of law, the legal advisers from both the republican political appointees in the democrat political appointees coincidently there were five of each photo is very evenly divided. they all lead towards the latter. they all thought international law with real bath. the next question is what does that mean? some people it's a international is only real law because if you

violated under reciprocity other countries are going to retaliate against you. so the pool of international is just fear of retaliation. the first surprise is the legal adviser said it's more complex than that. it's just not bilateral retaliation. there's a systemic kind of reciprocity worth the united states comes up with new interpretation of the lot it's not just that the other countries will use it against the future. sure they will not necessarily the long-term interests. but rather that the other countries will start using it against each other in the future, including our allies. and this was seen for example when the united states and its intervention into kosovo with its nato allies developed something that looked very close to humanitarian intervention. and rush out a couple of years later used that as an excuse for going into south of serbia and

georgia and they parroted the same language that the united states and its allies had used in 1999. so that's the kind of risk under systemic reciprocity. and then there's the constant reputation. you might think the united states is a superpower and if you craft us our economic might our military might relatives to all the other countries in the world. our diplomatic might also should be up there. and the one thing that you might consider is when henry kissinger said that is sort of lonely at the top there's only one superpower there's going to be a natural balance of power were the other countries oppose you. so maybe your graph will tilt down a little bit. but we see is during some periods of time when the united states is seen as blatantly violating international law and most recently that would've been the situation with the white house torture memos. the extraordinary rendition policy to use a black sites that the cia used in the waterboarding of some individuals up to 175 times or

more. at that point, i reputation took such a hit that our diplomacy was suffering greatly and the congress recognized this bipartisan committees recognize this, during the campaign of the last presidency, the candidates recognize this. what we see is the legal advisers also recognize this. they said we have to recognize that there is a reputation for lawfulness that the u.s. benefits from. we are at our strongest diplomatic league when we lead by moral example and when we don't, we weaken and further away all of that economic and military might and it cost the united states too much unilaterally to do all the things it wants to do what we can get the cooperation of other countries if we're seen as a lawbreaker. so this is reputational concern as well. there is also a general concern for the long-term stability of the legal system.

law and the long-term will protect the united states and citizens who may travel blog. we have more citizens traveling abroad in more stations traveling abroad than in the country than there is recognition that we are best protected in the long run by a stable rule of law and order which we can lead by example and we can impose on other countries by saying this is the way it's done and we don't have to worry about them say, but you're not doing it, you're ignoring the law so how can you accuse us of this. so when you put all that together the legal advisers all said we consider this a real compliance rule of law. we think international law is really long. does that mean it has complied with it 100% of the time? no, but neither is domestic law. paul mentioned the 55 or 65-mile per hour speed limit. a lot of people ignore the speed limit and go faster than that. but it still exerts a compliance poll. if there was no speed limit

whatsoever, we'd all be flying around and crashing into each other and that's more or less what international law is. the other way to look at it is of all the law criminal law, tort law, international laws mostly contract law and it is true that those of you in the room or lawyers are studying to be lawyers, maybe business lawyers that sometimes businesses will violate their contracts. sometimes the lawyers will say, you know what coming you should go ahead under the circumstances and just violate the contract. don't have to pay a penalty company do go to court not to pay compensation but it's better than being locked into this very fat contract. nutso international law is. at the margins the company will divide that if the legal visors doing their job, the policymakers will know what the consequences are and they'll go into that decision with their eyes wide open. that's not what happened with the cabal of lawyers who hijacked the legal analysis of the detainee issue. and we'll talk about that a little bit more in the evening.

but alternate over to you to talk about paul, some of the examples of the legal advisers told us about where international only did constrain the foreign policymakers. >> one of the things that michael and i were most surprised by this we perfectly expected that for third tier issues and most second-tier issues that there wouldn't be this compliance of paul, this binding nature of international law. but quite frankly even after spending all those years working at the department of state we were genuinely surprised that in a substantial number of cases of first-year issues where was the primary national security interest for the u.s. government to at least consider taking a particular action or taken an action they believe was morally justified, that they were advised by their employers not to do it, and the president or the secretary of state decided not to pursue that path.

i'll spend about five minutes just doing four or five of these examples. the first of which was when libya had basically turned over to yellow extremists, the tunisian passports and they had killed civilians in both the vienna airport in the rome airport, the president wanted to basically strike that can say they've used force we wanted to have a tit-for-tat approach and we need to use force to undertake airstrikes with olivia. he was advised boys voyeur that while this may be an appropriate course of action in the future there was currently no legal basis because they're not been articulated essentially that there would be retaliation. it had not been seen as proportional and there have not been in a sense fair notice this was going to be the new policy. reagan was essentially we have to come out change policy and be aggressive. his lawyers that you actually have to talk about guys that that's her new policy before you can implement it. and they did not deploy

airstrikes in that instance. they did make a statement they would in future be deploying airstrikes and they did deploy airstrikes and resold for future retaliation. there's also another libya example which is fairly telling about one of the upside for the national lock is that international law tends to be oddly enough a bit more rational and a bit more methodical. after the pan american flight 103, it was the target of a terrorism attack that brought down over lockerbie. we heard he had this policy of use of force and response in retaliation. the president was keen on doing so against iran and syria, which the u.s. government believed was responsible for downing in and one of three. the worst imprints the secretary of state and lawyers to pursue a judicial approach to set up a special tribunal in lockerbie trial to investigate. in the investigation they found that the perpetrators were to

get libya and not syria and iran. if they immediately come out of the gate with the preferred policy approach articulated it in its use of force we have them because they had us we would've had to run countries. the legal approach the rule of law provided that other new for more rational thinking and the gathering of the evidence through the legal process. there is also a situation at the achilles lauro which is a cruiseship in the mediterranean that was hijacked by terrorists, the terrorists killed an american citizen. they eventually doubt any judge, port and an egyptian plane ronald reagan deployed fighter planes out of an aircraft carrier to intercept the plane. and we were all remember him as the fighter planes went up and they threaten to shoot down the plane, the plane landed in italy and these individuals were arrested, detained and strong success. behind the scenes was that the

lawyers had said to president reagan, yes, you can intercept the plane. you can do all kinds of things that you cannot shoot it down. for the actual orders to the pilot for pretend like you can shoot the plane down, make them think you can shoot the plane down, they do not shoot the plane down. and they forced the plane to land in the nato air base in italy they became under the jurisdiction of nato. the treaty that related to this base essentially said that peace could only be used for nato activities. this is not a nato activity. the atari and surrounded the plane. there are americans on the base that the italians surrounded the plane, but the terrorists into custody and tried to an italian court. although this is public knowledge of the sort of kept quiet. and the reason is the american volvo was based primarily operated by the americans there was no jurisdiction under article xxxii of the nato contributing to this space. that constraint the ability of

what the americans really wanted to do was bring them back to the united states and try them here. you also find situations where it constrains the justification for using force. and constrains the political environment. for instance, what we'll remember as the rescue mission of the american medical students in grenada. that is actually not the legal justification which was put out. it was put out in a press briefing but among our colleagues and allies it was a much more nuanced legal opinion this is a debate to reach back and forth because it's much better to stand for the tv cameras and say the american military is going down the in rescuing american citizens and that is the basis for the u.s. deploying its troops into grenada as opposed to some complicated we were invited by the former prime minister who was pushed out in a two under article xxiv of the u.n. blog law. the russians were pushing the brezhnev doctor, the exact same

doctor then in the same doctor may use that caused south recession. der russian citizens to have an obligation to protect them. at the americans aggressively pushed the arguments beyond the domestic environment that we were there protecting american citizens, any country who wanted to intervene in another country would do so on a basis they they were there citizens in that country and they need to go in and protect them. to the legal visor.it is a very good for the bottle to turn on the public statements in the legal justifications of the u.s. in grenada. into last examples. one is the case of the u.s. hostages at the u.s. embassy in tehran. within the carter administration there is a serious divide as to how to respond. there was a proposal that would seriously put on the table to essentially drive u.s. forces at massachusetts avenue to the iranian embassy which was still operating in the united states and in a timely and gentler way hold them hostage.

they would have hostages, we would have hostages. that's how it works, you move on. erect violation of international law. and it was the legal adviser to convince the secretary of state to convince president carter to watch the proposal. they retained it with full diplomatic protection throughout the entire time of the crisis. that gave the americans some degree of moral authority which in fact did the justice case and the subsequent resolution. and the final one, the detail peace accords and the soon to be city and peace accords back in 1995 were invited to the peace negotiations they were the lead general and delete political instigator of the conflict. you really couldn't have peace we thought in bosnia without bringing the perpetrators. you can negotiate a peace agreement you need all sides. weeks before the dayton peace accords launch the prosecutor of

the yugoslav tried to be all indicted and the loudest for war crimes against humanity in the balkans. state department said that's okay, we're not a court. were peace negotiator saving lives and negotiating -- will of the court do with them later. they're so invited her peace negotiation. the legal visor had a step forward and say no actually staring david either tribunal in the hague under the u.n. you cannot bring them to dayton ohio and have them participate in the peace process. when you read the various books, written about the dayton peace process, they complied at the end of the day the prosecutors of south african in the heck i'm one of the most significant aspects in the process of the deal needed to be negotiated with president melissa and not by excluding them because of their indictment in legal advisor they were able to actually get the peace agreement at dayton and get to to the

bosnian conflict. you have that exact same situation replay now. president al-bashir of sudan is indicted for crimes against humanity war crimes and are for next week the peace process is deemed launched in qatar and ohio then there's the question. can you bring him into the peace process if he has been indicted by the international criminal court. cc up we play a lot of these questions and there's always a tension that will rot really matter. will they really be deployed on this first-tier type of questions? i've got to talk about the firemen were bought matter. michael will tell you and it's not always this way. only surprising swing a number of circumstances. he will not value by the number of circumstances where it they chose not to imply the world of law because the foreign policy prerogatives were seen to be so important imperative that they didn't want them to be cluttered by principles. >> usually when that happened it

was not at the legal advisor stated his case and they said were just going to do it anyway. or rather they didn't invite the legal advisor to dance. the legal advisor didn't have a seat at the table. a legal adviser said that was the most important thing for the process to work is for them to be part of the process, for them to be able to weigh in on the process. there were only four times in the last 30 years they could identify when they were cut out and they were very honest and open and candid about this. the first time was when the u.s. decided to mind the harbors of nicaragua. no legal opinion on the state department lawyers that ends up going to the international court of justice. the decision goes against us and was seen as a train wreck. could've done so much better if the lawyers have been involved. secondly also involving nicaragua was the case of the iran-contra affair. the united states with said we weren't going to be negotiating

with terrorists decided we were going to negotiate with hostage takers, get money from them to shift to the contras who were congress under the bowl amendments we were not to support. all this was done because of oliver north, something and was later indicted and prosecuted for it. state department legal advisers were completely cut out of that ten were only brought in at the end to clean up the mess. then there was a famous case of albert's machine and mexican doctor who had been involved in the kidnapping and torture of an american dea agent called kiki camarena. we found out about it are dea decided decided to go down and kidnapped him from mexico, beat him up a little and bring into the united states, get revenge and then prosecute. that case when i went to the supreme court where they said international law may have been violated but under domestic law were not going to dismiss the case. it was dismiss later because of

lack of evidence, he totals as faster. the foreign policy implications for every country in the world that we met is the u.s. going to kidnap her citizens for prosecution of the united states? is a violation of international law and legal visor set up a bit of the table the united states, the dea would not have done that. finally as i alluded to earlier and most recently as the case of the white house port your memos. what happened in that case is that john yoo and law professor from berkeley who as i said was reasonably hakim's new book together with the lawyer for the defense department and the vice president's lawyer adding ten -- am i missing a lawyer? three lawyers decided to call themselves the were council and they got together and they cut out the military lawyers and the state department lawyers and they started writing opinion after opinion saying the united

states could do these things like water board and that it wasn't torture. and yet they were not experts at the international conventions on torture. they made up their own conclusions and they fed them to the president. john yoo said in his book war by any other name, the reason they cut out the state department lawyers was because they were afraid that the president heard what powell had to say they wouldn't go along with their conclusions. so this is really scary and it shows it's very important for the state department lawyers to be there. but the state department lawyers also said they recognize that they were seen as a people who said no, no, no you can't do that that they'd never be invited to the table. instead they had to be seen as creative problem solvers here they had to find a solution for every person, not a problem for every concept, for every situation. and a lot of what we learned of the book was that international law is flexible enough to come up with some pretty creative

solutions. examples in the book they were talked about by legal advisers for the creation of the yugoslavia war crimes tribunal by the security council even though the security council under the u.n. charter does not clearly have the power to create an international criminal tribunal. i tribunal led to the rwanda tribunal, sierra leone, and now the permanent international court and lashed a whole new era of accountability all because the state department legal adviser thought outside the box and came up with some creative situations and solutions of what they call putting new wine into old bottles. in the book there are countless examples how international law at elastic enough to be creatively employed in italy advisers recognize they were outer limits to what they could do. the outer limits are defined by how our allies will respond how the international community will respond of the u.n. and international organizations respond. how law professors will run in the writing and how pulitzer prize winning journalist like

ray gutman and other colleagues will respond when the u.s. announces something that seems so clearly outside of international law. so with that is our process, where now a half-hour into the program. we would love to hear your questions and thoughts and comments and another goes on will share some or the insight that we have found from our discussions. we have a microphone to just pay for it to come around and speak clearly. >> this is probably a pretty simplistic question, but to set international law? >> at that the heart of this whole issue is where does international law come from. international law is generally from treaties bilateral contracts between countries and multilateral conventions that countries will negotiate an international organizations like the u.n. but it also comes from customary international law which is a long-term stay practice is

widespread out of a sense of legal obligation. so international law has been around with us for centuries. in modern international law was probably launched at the piece of west valley at about 400 years ago where the nationstate was recognized as a key actor in international law and the most modern development came after world war ii where we now have international tribune or civil prosecute individuals has a subject international law. but once a country like the u.s. ratified the treaty, and the senate gives its advice and consent were bound by that and often a treaty will also implement legislation like the torture convention has a law that says americans can commit toward her should be prosecuted. those people who wrote the torture memos or implemented them in water board at some of the guantánamo bay detainees have a real risk of possible prosecution if their lawyers were to conclude that these violated international law. what the lawyers were trying to

do was give them a golden shield, plausible deniability, the lawyer said it was legal for how can i be held responsible and that's something the obama administration is presently wrestling with. >> you call on them. >> do you think the bush administration's approach to international law did permanent damage? >> i'll let you answer that. >> is actually interesting new sf question because they're a number of former bush administration lawyers who are concerned about that possibility and are surprisingly seen it reflected in the current administration as well. michael touched on the answer to customary international law, the idea behind customary international lies the member states do it over a period of time under the belief that they are obligated to do it, it becomes law. but the opposite is true in states are pulling out of patterns of practice and saying

it doesn't apply, doesn't apply, you begin to road and water down international law. and you find yourself in circumstances where you want to rely upon it and use it to achieve your security objectives and it's been watered down and dissipated. that is one angle that i think one has to be concerned about them a legal perspective, from a citizen's perspective. the other is the moral authority of the united states. and i say that cautiously because i've always been somewhat skeptical about it. american diplomats and americans love to talk about our moral authority and how that binds and constrains other states. what i've been surprised not to last ten years as with the publicly international law we been deployed overseas in various places, americans and others are seen differently in the sense that the commitment to the rule of law, that there is, i've now servlets run a converter that there is moral authority when you do rule in

americans and others have certain leverages the power, but the moral authority should not be underestimated. i think that's one of the concerns were now faced with is a lot of our foreign policy, where the military that takes care of certain parts of our foreign policy and our defense, but much more of our foreign policy and many more mercer teacher contacted have been accomplished because of our moral authority, are committed to the rule of law are friendships, allies, deep relationships with other countries much more so than i ever would've thought. that's what i'm most worried about. >> i want to add to that. paul and i have recently co-authored a brief before the supreme court in the weaker case. o-oscar not familiar with outcome of the uighurs are muslim chinese citizens who were apprehended via the pakistan border, given to the united states troops, sent to guantánamo bay and they've been there for eight years. the obama administration like

the bush administration had determined that the uighurs are not a threat to national security. they're not associated with al qaeda. on the other hand they can't send them back to china because china our government has deemed to persecute them in novel violate the refugee convention nurse because he can't send someone back in the torture convention to please will be persecuted and tortured. the district court held that these people have to be released in the united states. probably with a sorry and now you can be u.s. citizens. you know, we're really bummed out that we made this mistake. the appeals court said no, hold on a second, as long as the obama administration says are trying to find a place for the uighurs they do not have to be released. the obama administration said we tried really hard but we can't find anywhere places. we've got a couple of palau, some in italy, no one else wants these guys and they're still a handful in guantánamo bay. so, to the supreme court and

they asked our policy group to write a brief that would weigh in on the question whether the supreme court decides that the uighurs have to stay in detention potentially forever in violation of international law and in violation of the supreme court, the spirit of the supreme court on president admitted meeting case, what will that do do our foreign policy? what will that do to a americans when they travel abroad? what will that do to people like paul and i who go abroad in trade and international international prosecutors and negotiate peace treaties and work on constitutions? and so are brief now available on the internet goes into great detail about the experiences that we've had in the field that indicate that the world does look of the united states very carefully concluding our supreme court decisions. and for the moral leader, he gives us great benefit of foreign policy if were seen as violating the law, it is a real detriment for us to accomplish

what we want to accomplish, including protecting americans abroad. other questions? gas. >> one of the things that was touched on in the book is a struggle between short-term and long-term potentially for these political persons. i was wondering what can be done considering that the nature of the political gain in the u.s. which is very short, everything is about the short-term wins and the next two years. what can be done to make sure people are looking more towards the future and can be done also? >> the question is essentially, how do you make international law which is somewhat cumbersome as a likely process compete with the short-term interest in our political environment. you make the commitment to the rule of law a short-term political interest. and president obama has done this early on essentially on

some of the proclamations relating to guantánamo this notion that the commitment to the rule of law is something that every political representative in the united states should commit to. now implementing that commitment is longer-term, more difficult, has to be sustained against buffeting by short-term political interest. but you want to take international law out of the universities into the bookstores anywhere people to be part of the political platform. this general commitment to the rule of law. but not only how we interact with each other about how we interact with their friends, allies and probably more importantly our adversaries. get that political momentum in the pair that with the long-term limitation of the rule of law. >> next question. iraq would've the criticisms

they talked about a little bit is the lack of sort of enforcement branch or some kind of enforcement make it by name. which is wondering about organizations like interpol and actually multilateral colbert actions. as i've seen is some kind of executive arm of international law? >> international law works best when there's some enforcement built-in. the world trade organization has become very effective at enforcing international trade law because the wto can rule against the country and give the aggrieved countries the right to have retaliatory measures and that brings other countries to compliance including the united states very wealthy. in some cases, like international criminal law you have security council created, international tribunals, international criminal court that they don't have constabulary and they have to really rely on the cooperation of countries, sometimes the

security council may authorize force that's very rare, especially because it's subject to veto and also sometimes the world bank and imf and other countries will use economic assistance and make it conditional as a way to induce appliance. as in the case of giving serbia $1.8 billion to surrender slow but non-poser to the tribunal in the hague. that was via the serbia serbia announced its number one trade commodities. interpol however is a misnomer. it's not international police force. it's a clearinghouse. it works basically when one country or international tribunal house in the west were meant it turns it in a distributed everywhere else in its modern day and then means when you go to an airport and show your passport will light up and then you could be arrested. the interpol itself doesn't have any police. the covert action is a little more cheaply. you've got targeted killing

which is very controversial. think about the movie, and munich. after the munich olympics israel went around and hunted down the palestinians that were involved in those that financed the killing of the israeli athletes. well now we have targeted killing by virtue of these -- editor drones that shoot down hellfire cruise missiles. and unfortunately it's a lot broader of an approach than just shooting somebody on the street. if you're going to send a missile to their house are going to kill innocent people and sometimes you even miss the perpetrator or your intelligence is wrong. so that's an area, one of the most controversial areas where the obama administration is continuing a bush administration policy using these predator drones and expanding their use. a lot of countries are looking at the same wait a minute, you're pushing the bounds of international law. you're going beyond the law.

>> couple of questions in the back there. >> the book suggests or seems to suggest that the involvement of legal advisers is essential to our nation action in times of crisis. and i'm wondering what guarantees there are that are legal advisers or not the gauge on you for example in how we can rely on our legal advisers to not be that way. >> i'll do a quick preliminary. one of the things we found surprising was when we have the legal visors in a room together, we were very focused on answering this question, but we also wanted to have it be a bit of a story about what we call dell, which is the designation of the letter of the legal office and the department of state and we asked them all to begin as we were candidate would be. how do you become the number one

public international lawyer in the u.s. government? interestingly, all of them were lawyers lawyers before they took that position, not a single one of them and they were fairly candid about this. and on a single one of them were purely political appointee. they had come in from decades of practice conference in new york, chicago, washington d.c. a surprising number of them were corporate lawyers. so they came in us basically, sure, were advising companies. when they come in a nearby cement company thought it is the law. they have that perspective. as a very fresh incense that is academics and international law didn't you read all of our books and study for decades, the current legal advisor was a former dean of the university of the élan school and has been studying this for decades. many other ones were wall street who were lawyers straight out of

the main law firms, the main adversaries and their approach was they were going to be lawyers not policymakers. and that i think is important to keep an eye. we've been very lucky in the last 40 years on that. it could change. their 8000 political payments every time there's a new election. the public village and vigilance to ensure that the legal visors are career lawyers, lawyers lawyers. >> for me at two things. one is unlike john yoo was an extremist and higher for his position because of his extreme use is it to believe a legal advisers have to be confirmed by the senate and have to go through public confirmation process that takes sometimes many months as a recently did with harrow co. and expresses their views ahead of time. that often means are going to try to find middle-of-the-road

legal advisers that the most extreme political appointees. the second thing is the process that l has always had that before get to the legal advisor has to go through clearance process and all the experts in the lower levels of l, the attorney of visors like paul and i and the assistant legal advisers have to look at it. and so, you get enough other people's eyes looking at this process. and when there's an issue in the u.s. government for the state department lawyers say one thing and lawyers from another branch of the justice department say something else, is supposed to go through an interagency process or the nsc, the national security council makes the final decision but everybody is supposed to weighing in. the only times the system breaks down is when there is a purposeful effort to cut off the lawyers that are supposed to be part of the process. and so the solution is to keep the right lawyers contributing in the way that was designed and almost always works. >> if i could pick on this and

then there's the question right next to you to follow-up on that. one thing that struck me when i was among you're at the separate there's a picture of the president, vice president, secretary of state and after the election the next day they are replaced by the new president, vice president, secretary of state and everyone is like okay. i always wonder where the old photos go. but in the office of the legal visors or conference room room is a photo of every single legal advisor in the walk-in and you say this is judge aber tam, former judge, monroe leigh one of the icons of the washington legal establishment. there is a sense that l has a personality which continues in its job is to provide assistance to the secretary of state into the president, whereas in the other day are political appointees that sought out and you never find the former assistant secretary of state picture in the office. it's always the current

secretary of state. there is a culture and tradition which i think is very important to maintain. >> at what point does have her do these problems like the torture memo is get back to people like george w. bush and would they ever be prosecuted? would he ever be prosecuted for them? what kind of consequences or sanctions would result? >> in the old days, as paul alluded to, there were no criminal problems or penalties if he violated international law. but starting about 1945 it has become the case that individuals can be prosecuted for order in wartime, crimes against humanity, genocide and torture among other things. this is because there are treaties that say there is a duty to prosecute those people and in the u.s. federal statutes that implement the treaty, give authorization to the department of justice to prosecute. the department justice herded

unturned headed. sometimes they are very controversial like the political decisions to fire certain prosecutors because they were or were not prosecuting certain cases during the bush administration. so the current obama administration has a widow conundrum. obama wants to be sort of nelson mandela. he wants to look ahead, not behind. he knows politically it's going to be very divisive and hurt his chance for reelection in the congressmen and senators were running for office in the next election. if he has a very strong effort to try to prosecute the lawyers who wrote the white house torture memos and the individuals who implemented them. and maybe even the president to authorize them in the end. so instead they have created a special prosecutor to investigate. and it's given him a very limited mandate. they said only people who have committed acts of torture that were not authorized by the

torture memos. so those are people who tortured before the memos came out over those are people who did things even worse than waterboarding. and there were things worse than waterboarding. unfortunately, the obama administration refuses to release a bunch of photographs of things that happen in afghanistan and guantánamo bay and abu grade. the reason they don't want to release those they say is because it will make the terrorist enemies hate us even more. the truth is there's stuff in there that would probably create a public outcry for the heads of those who have committed those if you saw them you would be so disgusted that you would have to say those people have to leave justice. i don't know for going to see anybody prosecuted. it may just be a couple of state builders, some low-level people like wendy, what was her name from abu grade, the woman, lindy

england. but personally i think that those who manipulated the system that created it for counsel that cut out subfloor and according to the senate bipartisan committee purposely distorted the law knowing it was going to be to torture. i think most people should be held responsible. at a minimization of ethics issue with the state bar and i think they should be looked at for serious prosecutions. but i'm not confident that's how do you administration will precede it in four broad reasons. [inaudible] >> week, we need to get the microphone. by the way, this is carol fox. she edited the transcript and was a big contributor to the book and co-teaches my work time

slot. were doing were currently for the lebanon tribunal and i worked further international tribunals. >> i just wanted to follow-up on the question about the possible prosecution of people who were involved in the torture memos and so on. you express the suspicion that it's not going to happen in the united states courts, but other courts around the world might find under universal jurisdiction or some other arrangements that they would want to take on those people. and so constraining these people's freedom to travel, that sort of thing. a >> part of the compliance pull of international plot is this new fear that people have that if they violated they may not be prosecuted domestically but when they travel abroad they could be prosecuted under what's known as universal jurisdiction, the torture convention and the geneva convention say that any country that gets its hand on someone who committed a

violation has the authority to prosecute. what we've seen our our investigations and indictments in several countries. the most recent thing happen in this area is that the united kingdom has just announced an indictment of one of the military leaders from israel that was involved in operation past led in gaza. and so that individual has that i'm not going to travel anywhere because i'm scared i might get executed to the united kingdom. i will not comment on whether that individual has violated the law but i certainly think that we've seen that henry kissinger doesn't travel anymore ever since chris hitchens wrote his book the indictment of henry kissinger. many countries have considered or are actually implemented complaints against him. i don't think john yoo is doing a lot of traveling these days other than his american book tour. >> other questions? back far corner.

>> we only have two minutes of this may be our last question. >> you mentioned the legal advisers and none of them seriously considered resigning when their legal advice was not taken into account or considered. why do you think these political advisers didn't resign and did they make the correct choice? >> they talked a lot in the book about the situation of elizabeth bummers. she is someone we actually had asked her at the university lately. she was the deputy legal adviser in the united kingdom and she wrote a memo to the prime minister, tony blair, saying don't invade iraq. tell bush to go pound sand. it would violate international law unless the security council resolution. blair didn't like that and he went in and got another opinion from his attorney general and they said that the close call, but go ahead. because of that the u.s. and the u.k. did invade iraq in 2003.

she resigned. she didn't tell anybody why because she felt that she given legal advice in confidence. that's one of the problems resided when your employer. like a policymaker doesn't every sign, you can't plaster resignation in "the new york times." you have to keep it a secret. no one really knows why he resigned. a couple of years later someone leaked her resignation letter and everyone understood what was going on. we has to legal advisers what they would do in that case and everyone of them said at some point there might be duty to resign. and they all said if they were under the circumstances, they consider doing the same thing. now, why didn't they resign in the four cases retards about where they were cut out and it was a huge train recommender very upset about it >> what do you think? >> interestingly they all admitted as michael said that there may become an obligation to resign. this type back to the earlier question of who is the client? ..