Major New Book Discusses Key Issues in the Struggle Against Terror

, April 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A major new book on Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror—including contributions from nineteen prominent experts from government and the academic community—was published today by Carolina Academic Press in cooperation with the University of Virginia Law School's Center for National Security Law (which celebrates its twenty-ninth anniversary this month as the nation's oldest think tank in the growing new field).  

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, produced an unusual armed conflict raising a variety of important issues under both international and United States law.  What legal regime should govern the detention and treatment of alleged foreign terrorists?  Are they soldiers or criminals?  Some say they are "unlawful combatants," but what does that really mean?  Should they be tried by military courts or in federal district courts?  

How can America best reconcile our desire to prevent future terrorist attacks with our historic commitment to protecting civil liberties?  Should the government be able to have civil lawsuits dismissed on the grounds that going to trial would inevitably disclose sensitive "State Secrets"?  Is there a role for civil lawsuits to hold terrorists and States that support them accountable when their attacks harm Americans?

To assist both policymakers and the general public to understand some of these complex issues, two of the founders of the academic field of "national security law" have brought together a distinguished and diverse group of experts to address key issues in the struggle against terror. As the chapters in this volume will demonstrate, honest and able experts are not in full agreement on many of these important issues.

More than two decades before 9/11, the editors of this volume, Professors John Norton Moore and Robert F. Turner, founded the Center for National Security Law (CNSL) at the University of Virginia School of Law—the world's first "think tank" in what is now an established field taught at most law schools.  A decade before 9/11 they began training law professors and government lawyers in their annual National Security Law Institute, which will take place for the eighteenth time this summer between May 30 and June 11.  Many of the contributors to this volume have either attended or taught at CNSL Institutes.

SOURCE University of Virginia Law School’s Center for National Security Law