National Security Advisors: Advising Governments on Military Force and National Security

The Center on Law and Security
Presents:

National Security Advisors: Advising Governments on Military Force and National Security

The video of this event is available, click here to watch.

Featuring:

President (ret.) Dorit Beinisch

Supreme Court of Israel
Sir Daniel Bethlehem KCMG QC
Former Legal Adviser to the United Kingdom Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Brigadier General (ret.) Kenneth Watkin
OMM, CD, QC, Former Judge Advocate General of Canada

Moderated by:

Professor Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
New York University, School of Law

Tuesday, December 4, 2012
7:45-8:45 p.m.
NYU School of Law
Lipton Hall, 108 W. 3rd Street
New York, NY

President Dorit Beinisch served as the President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 2006-2012 and as Justice of the Supreme Court since December 1995. Before joining the Supreme Court Justice Beinisch served in the Israeli Ministry of Justice for 28 years holding different positions in the criminal law and Constitutional and Administrative Law divisions. Her last role in the Ministry of Justice was the State Attorney of Israel in charge of all state litigation in courts. Throughout her public service, Beinisch represented the state of Israel in major cases before the Supreme Court. President Beinisch received her legal education (LL.B. and LL.M. summa cum laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sir Daniel Bethlehem KCMG QC is a barrister in practice from Chambers in London at 20 Essex Street.  From May 2006 to May 2011, he was the principal Legal Adviser of the United Kingdom Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Prior to this, he was in practice at the London Bar and Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge.  He is also the founding Director of Legal Policy International Limited (LPI), and a Consulting Senior Fellow at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Brigadier General (ret.) Kenneth W. Watkin, OMM, CD, QC, retired in April 2010 as the Judge Advocate General for the Canadian forces after 33 years of military service, including twenty-eight years as a military legal officer.  As Judge Advocate General from 2006 to 2010 Mr. Watkin was legal advisor to the Governor General, the Minister of National Defence, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces in matters of military law and superintended the administration of the Canadian military justice system.  He was the Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law at the United States Naval War College.  Mr Watkin is the recipient of the Canadian Bar Association’s (CBA) 2010 President’s Award. The Award recognizes the significant contribution of a Canadian jurist to the legal profession, to the CBA or to the public life of Canada.

Professor Richard H. Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of public law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. In the area of democracy, Pildes, along with the co-authors of his acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (now in its third edition), has helped to create a revolutionary field of study in the law schools.  Pildes received his A.B. in physical chemistry summa cum laude from Princeton, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard.