The Center for Law and Counterterrorism hosts a symposium at the National Press Club on the "lawfare" debate.
Panel I - Is It a War? Legal Ramifications
Panelists: David B. Rivkin Jr., Baker and Hostetler;
Roger Pilon, Cato Institute; Stuart Taylor, National Journal; Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, Israel Democracy Institute
Panel II - Should We Have a National Security Court?
Panelists: Hon. Michael B. Mukasey, former chief judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; Hon. George J. Terwilliger III, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General; Steven Shapiro, Legal Director, ACLU.
Bio
Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer
Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer was born in Fuert, Germany, on November 16th, 1948.
He is the Ivan C. Rand Professor of Criminal Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was formerly Dean of the Faculty. He teaches Criminal Law and Constitutional Law. Since 1994, he has been a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. He was the chairperson of the Israeli Association of Public Law.
Andrew C. McCarthy
For 18 years, Mr. McCarthy was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York where he led the terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. He served as the Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District's satellite office and also supervised the Office's Command Post near Ground Zero in New York City following the 9/11 attacks.
Mr. McCarthy is the recipient of numerous awards including the Justice Department's highest honors: the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award and the Distinguished Service Award. In 2004, he served as a Special Assistant to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Michael B. Mukasey
Michael Mukasey was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1941 and graduated from Columbia College and Yale Law School, where he was on the Board of Editors of the Yale Law Journal. Prior to becoming Attorney General, he had a lengthy career as an attorney, including service as an Assistant United States Attorney from 1972 to 1976 in New York. From 1975 to 1976 he also served as chief of his district's Official Corruption Unit. From 1976 to 1987 he was an associate, and then member, of the firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler.
Mukasey was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and served until 2006, the last six years as chief judge. During that time, Judge Mukasey presided over hundreds of cases, including the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 co-defendants charged with conspiring to blow up numerous sites in New York. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he was widely praised for the speed with which the federal courthouse, located just blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, returned to normal operation.
Upon his retirement from the bench, Mukasey returned to Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, in the firm's litigation group.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous awards over the years, including the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal Bar Council, the William Tendy Award from the Fiske Association, awards from the Seymour Association, the Respect for Law Alliance, and the Ari Halberstam Award from the Jewish Children's Museum. He also received an honorary degree from the Brooklyn Law School.
Mukasey's professional and civic activities have included service as a director of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation and as a director of the Jewish Children's Museum. He has also been a lecturer in law at the Columbia Law School. He was a member of the Automation and Technology Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States; was chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York State Bar Association; was a member of the Federal Courts Committee and the Communications Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; and was a member of the American Bar Association.
Judge Mukasey was nominated to be Attorney General by President George W. Bush on September 17, 2007, and confirmed by the United States Senate on November 8. He entered duty on November 9.
Roger Pilon
Roger Pilon is the founder and director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, which has become an important force in the national debate over constitutional interpretation and judicial philosophy. He is the publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review and is an adjunct professor of government at Georgetown University through The Fund for American Studies.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a National Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University's School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction.
Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC's Nightline, CBS's 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and other media.
Pilon holds a B.A. from Columbia University, an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law.
David B. Rivkin Jr.
David B. Rivkin, Jr., is a member of the firm Baker Hostetler, litigation, international and environmental groups. He has in-depth experience with various constitutional issues that are frequently implicated by federal regulatory statutes, including commerce clause-, appointments clause- and due process-related issues, as well as First and Tenth amendment-related matters.
Mr. Rivkin also has practiced in the area of public international law and has extensive experience in international arbitration and policy advocacy on a wide range of international and domestic issues, including treaty implementation, multilateral and unilateral sanctions, corporate law, environmental and energy matters (with an emphasis on policy, regulatory and enforcement issues).
Steven Shapiro
Legal Director of the ACLU
Steve Shapiro at the 2006 Membership Conference
Steven R. Shapiro is the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nation's oldest and largest civil liberties organization.
He directs a staff of approximately 90 full-time lawyers who maintain a large and active docket of civil liberties cases around the country. Those cases cover a broad range of issues, including: free speech, racial justice, religious freedom, due process, privacy, reproductive and women's rights, immigrant's rights, gay rights, voting rights, prisoner's rights, and the death penalty.
Shapiro has been the ACLU's Legal Director since 1993, and served as Associate Legal Director from 1987-1993. During that time, he has appeared as counsel or co-counsel on more than 200 ACLU briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court.
Stuart Taylor Jr.
Stuart Taylor Jr. is a nonresident Senior Fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.
Constitutional law, international law, legal affairs, Supreme Court
Previous Position(s): Senior Writer, American Lawyer Media (1989-1997); McGraw Distinguished Lecturer in Writing, Princeton University (1988-1989); Reporter and Supreme Court correspondent, New York Times (1980-1988); Attorney, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (1978-1980); Reporter, Baltimore Sun and Evening Sun (1971-1974)
Hon. George J. Terwilliger III
Partner, White & Case LLP; former U.S. Deputy Attorney General
George Terwilliger is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of White and Case LLP, an international law firm. Mr. Terwilliger primarily represents institutional clients in dealings with the United States government. These include government investigations and enforcement proceedings, as well as trial and appellate litigation. He is a veteran litigator with over fifty jury trials and many appearances and arguments in appellate cases.
member. 
