About the Standing Committee on Law and National Security
The American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security was founded in 1962 by former ABA President and Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Chicago attorney Morris I. Leibman, Rear Admiral William C. Mott (USN-JAG, Ret.), Professor Frank Barnett, and R. Daniel McMichael of U.S. Steel Corporation and later, Secretary of the Scaife Foundation. Their initial goal was to contrast the American system of government under the rule of law with the alternative system of international communism. Gradually they broadened the Standing Committee's mandate to provide legal insight on a host of important national security problems, ranging from legal controls on intelligence and the use of armed force to export controls and the importance of maintaining adequate strategic stockpiles.
From its inception, the Standing Committee has pursued its objectives through a diverse program of scholarship, conferences, workshops, and publications. One measure of the Committee's effectiveness is the rapid growth in recent years of the field it pioneered. For example, the number of accredited law schools offering courses or seminars on national security law has increased from 1 in 1974, to 7 in 1984, to 83 in 1994- more than a ten-fold increase in the past decade. By 1990, there were three separate law school casebooks on "national security law." Today, nearly half of the nation's accredited law schools have one or more offerings in this field.
The Standing Committee itself is comprised of eleven members appointed by the ABA President for staggered three year terms. Over the years, the Standing Committee has included among its members individuals who have served as Senators and Representatives, Director of Central Intelligence, Secretary of the Army, Deputy Secretary of Labor, ambassadors, legal advisers to the Department of State and National Security Council, general counsels to the Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, several military services, and key congressional committees; and a diverse range of prominent scholars from the nation's preeminent law schools.
