Guantanamo, Drones, and the Courts: A Conversation About National Security Law

This year has seen significant developments in national security issues of interest to South Asian Americans.  Important D.C. Circuit decisions have challenged the scope of the Guanatanamo military commissions.  These rulings, along with a set of high-profile prosecutions, have triggered new questions about Guantanamo's legal status and role. Separately, the Obama Administration's recently released white paper on drone policy has raised its own set of important legal questions.

Please join our panel of nationally recognized experts as we discuss these issues.

Wells C. Bennett is an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a Visiting Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to Brookings, he was an Associate at Arnold & Porter LLP.

Steve Vladeck is a professor of law and the associate dean for scholarship at American University Washington College of Law. A 2004 graduate of Yale Law School, Steve clerked for Judge Marsha Berzon on the Ninth Circuit and Judge Rosemary Barkett on the Eleventh Circuit. In addition to serving as a senior editor of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, Steve is also the co-editor of Aspen Publishers’ leading National Security Law and Counterterrorism Law casebooks.

Raha Wala is an Advocacy Counsel in the Law and Security Program.  Raha graduated with honors from Georgetown University Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Georgetown Journal of International Law, co-president of Georgetown Law’s Amnesty International chapter, and student co-director of the Iraqi Refugee Resettlement Fact-Finding Project. Raha is the recipient of the Bettina E. Pruckmayr Award in International Human Rights and the author of From Guantánamo to Nuremberg and Back: An Analysis of Conspiracy to Commit War Crimes Under International Humanitarian Law.