Please join us for a talk by Robert Chesney, Charles I. Francis Professor in Law, University of Texas School of Law.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
12:15 PM - 1:00 PM
UCLA Law School
Room 1447
Los Angeles, CA 90095

ABSTRACT

Anwar al-Awlaki is a dual Yemeni-American citizen who has emerged in recent years as a leading English-language proponent of violent jihad, including explicit calls for the indiscriminate murder of Americans. According to the U.S. government, moreover, he also has taken on an operational leadership role with the organization al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), recruiting and directing individuals to participate in specific acts of violence. Does international law permit the U.S. government to kill al-Awlaki in these circumstances? The issue raises questions under the U.N. Charter system, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law, all of which have larger significance for the set of post-9/11 policies once known as the “global war on terrorism.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Robert Chesney is the Charles I. Francis Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law, a Distinguished Scholar of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution. His scholarship examines legal and policy questions associated with U.S. national security, including but not limited to terrorism-related issues. In 2009, Chesney served in the Justice Department in connection with the Detainee Policy Task Force created by Executive Order 13493, and he also previously served the Intelligence Community as an associate member of the Intelligence Science Board. He currently is a member of the Advisory Committee of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, a senior editor for the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the American Law Institute.

He is a past chair of Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools (as well as the AALS Section on New Law Teachers) and a past editor of the National Security Law Report (published by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security). Chesney has published on an array of topics, including military detention (both from a domestic and an international law perspective), civilian criminal prosecution in terrorism-related cases, and civil litigation involving the state secrets privilege.

Professor Chesney is a magna cum laude graduate of both Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School. After law school he clerked for the Honorable Lewis A. Kaplan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the Honorable Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then practiced with the firm Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York (litigation), before beginning his academic career with Wake Forest University School of Law. In 2008 he came to the University Of Texas School Of Law as a visiting professor, and then joined UT on a permanent basis in 2009.
 

Sponsor(s): Burkle Center for International Relations, The International Human Rights Program at the UCLA Law School