Are We Over-Lawyering International Affairs

This panel will discuss the role of lawyers — particularly government lawyers — in addressing questions of legal policy. We will discuss fundamental questions such as: Should lawyers decide legal policy? Or, is that best left to the policymakers? Should lawyers give advice as to legal policy, or should they stick to providing answers as to what the law is? How should lawyers respond to what a policymaker thinks is the legal question, but is really a question of legal policy? If lawyers find the law vague or lacking, should they fill in the gaps, advising as to what the law should be? Was Secretary of State Rice right when she warned the American Society of International Law that lawyers should not stretch laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, to apply to circumstances they were not designed for? Did the Office of the Justice Department’s opinions on interrogation techniques stretch in the other direction when they held that laws did not restrict the President’s authority? Should lawyers indicate the quality of the response to a question? For example, should they say how a court would, or should, decide, or is it just enough to say that this is a reasonable answer and others may differ? What should a government lawyer do after losing an intra-governmental policy argument on a legal issue? Is the answer different if the argument was over a legal policy issue

Some Uses of History

Philip Zelikow, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, presented "Some Uses of History," at The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative's "Nuclear Summer" Global Strategy Lecture Series on July 8. Zelikow's lecture, cosponsored by The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative, The Department of History, The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, was one of 11 lectures on nuclear proliferation that will take place during the summer of 2010

The political economy of business regulation in Nigeria An examination of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decrees of 1972 and 1977

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D170428 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

To Regain Policy Competence: The Software of American Public Problem-Solving (August 2019)

American policymaking has declined over the past several decades, but it is something that can be regained. It is not ephemeral or lost to the mists of time. The skills needed to tackle public problem-solving are specific and cultural — and they are teachable.LBJ School of Public Affair

Why Did America Cross the Pacific? Reconstructing the U.S. Decision to Take the Philippines, 1898-99 (November 2017)

This essay offers a micro-historical reconstruction of a fateful choice made by the United States. Satisfactory reconstructions of this kind are rare. When it comes to historical episodes of import, even those that have been extensively written about and researched, it is often difficult to identify when the critical choices actually occurred. It is even more difficult to reconstruct, with a policymaker’s eye, the information available at the time, the institutional context, and the plausibly available alternative courses of action.LBJ School of Public Affair