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Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan legal resident at the center of an FBI terrorism investigation, was ordered held without bail today after pleading not guilty in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York to the charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2332a(a)(2).  Federal prosecutors contend that Zazi planned to travel to New York City to detonate homemade bombs  as part of an al-Qaeda related plot.  Indeed, they detailed some of the evidence they will likely use at trial in the detention memorandum they filed on September […]

The Obama Administration announced on Wednesday its decision to heighten the standards used by Justice Department officials when they seek to invoke the state secrets privilege.  The new policy comes in response to the widely held belief that Bush Administration lawyers had abused the privilege in a number of terrorism-related suits.  Military and intelligence agency officials now must first convince the Attorney General and a number of other Justice Department officials that the release of certain information or the continuance of a suit would cause “significant harm” to “national defense or foreign relations” before DOJ lawyers will invoke the state

Tuesday, September 8th Today a group of government leaders issued a statement discussing climate change as a national security issue and calling for a bipartisan plan to address the U.S.’s role. The group of 32 signatories – including eight former Senators, three former National Security Advisors, two former Secretaries of State, a former Secretary of Defense, and both the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission – was convened by the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA). A panel of members discussed the need for a bipartisan bill to reduce emissions leading to climate change, in order to improve

The HLS National Security Journal was approved by Harvard Law during the summer of 2009. We will be updating the website frequently as the school year gets underway.

Welcome to the HLS National Security Journal! The Harvard National Security Journal has recently been approved as an official student journal of Harvard Law School, and its members are now undertaking the more daunting task of establishing a working online journal. NSJ will be a student-edited, faculty- and practitioner-advised, online academic journal. It will serve both as a contribution to the universe of ideas surrounding national security law and policy and as a source for updates on relevant fields. NSJ welcomes article submissions from both academics and practitioners in the national security field. Preference is given to relatively brief pieces