Almost ten years ago, Congress passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force in response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. The AUMF explained that “the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

Just this past week, Navy Seals under the direction of President Barack Obama conducted a raid resulting in the death of Osama bin Laden, a person President Obama and his predecessor President George W. Bush had determined “planned and authorized” the September 11 attacks. In the years before the United States took down bin Laden, the AUMF has been used as the statutory authority for the war in Afghanistan, our actions at Guantanamo Bay, targeted killings, drone warfare, and countless other U.S. military operations. One recent military operation where the AUMF did not authorize U.S. military force, however, was our recent intervention in Libya, where the action was articulated as being largely for “humanitarian” purposes, but justified by the Office of Legal Counsel as being constitutional because it was taken in the “national interest” and was limited in scope so as not to constitute war.

Judge Abraham Sofaer was the legal adviser to the Department of State from 1985-1990, tasked with providing guidance on the legal boundaries of the United States’s actions abroad both in the context of our Constitution and International Law. Previously, he served as a federal district judge for the Southern District of New York. Since 1994, Judge Sofaer has been the George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Judge Sofaer will discuss some of the legal issues concerning the AUMF, war powers generally, and how our approaches to national security today may or may not best be understood as operating under the AUMF framework. Lunch will be served.

The Stanford National Security and the Law Society is comprised of students concerned with the intersection of national security policy and substantive law either on the books or yet to be written. We seek to foster discussion and debate within the SLS community as to what national security policies will be most effective, what policies are allowed by our current laws and Constitution, and how national security law should be changed and shaped to adapt to changing circumstances.