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Philip Bobbitt divides his time between London, where he lectures on military strategy, and Columbia, where he is the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence. For years, he kept the two fields separate, even maintaining different collections of books in London and New York. After all, what connection was there between military strategy and constitutional law?

But the events of 9/11 changed all that, Bobbitt said during a talk Sept. 10 at the law school. The blow that America suffered that day, he said, meant that the U.S. would be fighting a long war in which the goal was no longer to defeat enemy soldiers but to protect civilians. That would require new strategies that could conflict with statutory protections.

Bobbitt's inquiry into how such conflicts between law and strategy could be avoided led, most recently, to his 2008 book Terror and Consent, which British historian Niall Ferguson described in The New York Times as "the most profound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11—indeed, since the end of the cold war." (Bobbitt has been consulted by both the Obama and McCain campaigns, according to Richard Gardner, the Columbia law professor who introduced him at the talk.)

Bobbitt's was the first in a series of law school lectures on international law and policy issues facing the next president. During the talk, Bobbitt made clear that the dangers faced by American society are great. The war on terror, he said, has three components: a war against terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda; a global struggle to prevent the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction; and the protection of civilians against catastrophes, natural and man-made.

Despite the urgency of his message, Bobbitt, who was educated at Yale, Princeton and Oxford, was cool and composed during his noontime lecture. He began his lecture with bits of poetry, as well as a disarming call to the students in his seminar, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century, to skip the lecture and enjoy the sunny afternoon, since he was saying nothing they hadn't already heard. The remainder of the standing-room-only crowd of about 120 listened closely as Bobbitt described the enemy, which he says is global, networked and inclined to privatize its operations—a mirror of the society it is determined to terrorize.

According to Bobbitt, the law has to provide new methods of surveillance, compelling suspects to divulge information and detaining those who pose a danger. He called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—the Nixon-era law governing wiretapping of Americans, recently amended amid controversy— "totally obsolete and foolish" given advances in communications technology. That position will not endear him to liberals, nor will his support for the idea of preemptive war. "Don't let anyone tell you that preemptive war is unlawful," he said. "Preemption is acceptable in the face of an imminent attack."

Yet Bobbitt is hardly an apologist for the Bush administration. In the war on terror, he said, "the population understands that you have to deceive your enemy. This administration has deceived not just the enemy but the American public." He cited the administration's illegal surveillance of Americans and its abandonment of the principles of habeas corpus. "I believe the idea that we should strip people of habeas corpus is ludicrous. The government," he said, "cannot operate without giving us rights."

Instead of being ignored, he said, the law can be modified to fit changing circumstances—something it is able to do with help from scholars like Bobbitt. After 9/11, he said, "I felt bereft that we did not have at our disposal the ideas we needed." His research is an attempt to fill those gaps.

"On 9/11," he added, "we were tested, and it is too soon to say if we responded successfully. This I can say for certain: We will all be tested again."

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