Philip Bobbitt
Encyclopedia
Philip Chase Bobbitt is an America
n author, academic, and public servant who has lectured in the United Kingdom
. He is best known for work on military strategy
and constitutional law
and theory
, and as the author of Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution (1982), The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History
(2002) and Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century
(2008).
. He is the only child of Oscar Price Bobbitt (died 1995) (son of Oscar Price Bobbitt and Maude Wisner) and Rebekah Luruth Johnson Bobbitt (1910–1978) (daughter of Sam Johnson and Rebekah Baines). O.P. Bobbitt was a direct descendant of Henry Wisner, the only delegate from New York to vote for the Declaration of Independence and William Bobbitt, a Virginia planter (d. 1673). Rebekah Bobbitt's father and grandfather were members of the Texas Legislature; her great grandfather was president of Baylor University
. Bobbitt is the nephew of Lyndon Baines Johnson, president of the United States from 1963 to 1969; Rebekah Bobbitt was the eldest sister of the 36th president. Between high school and college, Bobbitt resided for the summer in the White House.
in 1971 where his thesis advisor was Richard Rorty
(thesis: On Wittgenstein and a Philosophical Topology
). At Princeton he was president of the Ivy Club and Chairman of the Nassau Lit. In 1975 he received his J.D. from Yale Law School
, where he was Article Editor of the Yale Law Journal and taught at Yale College. It was at Yale that he met Charles L. Black (1915–2001); Black became a mentor to Bobbitt. He received his M.A and Ph.D. (Modern History) from Oxford
in 1983.
(1903–1986) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
after which he returned to Austin. His first book Tragic Choices (1978), written with Yale Law Professor (later Dean and Judge of the Second Circuit) Guido Calabresi was a study of how societies make certain decisions---who gets expensive medical care, who is to be drafted into the army, who may have children, and similar choices by which societies are defined. It has won a number of awards and is studied in other disciplines as well as law.
Bobbitt was also at Nuffield College, Oxford
, where he was Anderson Senior Research Fellow and a member of the Modern History faculty from 1983 to 1990; later he was the Marsh Christian Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies
at King's College London
1994-1997. From 1981 to 1982, and again in 2004 he was visiting research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
.
Until 2007, Bobbitt held the A.W. Walker Centennial Chair at the University of Texas, where he taught constitutional law
. In 2005 he was the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
; in 2007, Bobbitt was the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School
, where he accepted a permanent chair later that year; he is now the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia and Director of the Center for National Security there. He remains Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas Law School and Senior Fellow in the Robert S. Strauss
Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas.
He is a Fellow of the Club of Madrid
, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Pacific Council on International Affairs, the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, a Life Member of the American Law Institute, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
. He serves as a member of the Commission on the Continuity of Government and serves on the Task Force on Law and National Security of the Hoover Institution
at Stanford. In May 2010 he was appointed to serve as a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law.
on the charter of the Central Intelligence Agency
(Austin Chronicle, June 21, 2002). He later was Legal Counsel to the Iran-Contra Committee in the U. S. Senate, the Counselor for International Law at the State Department
during the George H. W. Bush administration, and served at the National Security Council
, where he was director for Intelligence Programs, senior director for Critical Infrastructure, and senior director for Strategic Planning during Bill Clinton's presidency.
an) history
of strategic innovation
s, major war
s, peace conferences, international diplomacy and constitution
al standards for states
. Bobbitt also suggests possible future scenarios and policies appropriate to them.
Arguing that "law
and strategy
are not merely made in history . . . they are made of history" (p. 5), Bobbitt presents a dynamic view of historical change that has a dark, tragic
dimension, for he holds that the painful and, indeed, atrocious process of resolving issues that create conflict and war
tends to cause changes that render obsolete the solution to that conflict (generally a new form of the state possessing a new principle of legitimacy), even as it is established. This tragic dimension is evoked in the title of Bobbitt's book, inspired by the extraordinary last lines of Book 18 of Homer
's Iliad
, describing a shield fabricated for Achilles
by the Hephaestus
, across the "vast expanse" of which "with all his craft and cunning/the god creates a world of gorgeous immortal work" (trans. Robert Fagles
).
The Shield of Achilles generated much interest in the diplomatic and political community. Public officials who follow Bobbitt's works include the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
, Tony Blair
; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams
, who built his Dimbleby Lecture
around Bobbitt's thesis; and the former Prime Minister of Australia
, John Howard
, who referred to Bobbit's book in a 2004 address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Lecture.
The book and its thesis has also been discussed by the Vice-President of India, Prince Hassan of Jordan, and other political figures. It is currently being translated into Mandarin
by a team at the University of Beijing.
, which applied many of the ideas of The Shield of Achilles to the problems of wars on terror. Terror and Consent was on both the New York Times and the London Evening Standard’s best-seller lists and was widely reviewed. Among others, Senator John McCain
praised the book as “the best book I’ve ever read on terrorism,” and Henry Kissinger
called Bobbitt, “perhaps the most important political philosopher today.” Tony Blair
wrote of Terror and Consent, “It may be written by an academic but it is actually required reading for political leaders.” David Cameron
, the leader of the Tory party in the UK put it on a list of summer reading for his parliamentary colleagues in 2008. In Terror & Consent, Bobbitt argued that the only justification for warfare in the 21st century was to protect human rights.
. It is the only prize given by the nation for poetry. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
, and a former trustee of Princeton University
. In 2004 Prospect Magazine named him One of Britain's Top 100 Public Intellectuals. He occasionally writes essay
s, typically on foreign policy
, published in The New York Times, and The Guardian
(of London
).
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
n author, academic, and public servant who has lectured in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. He is best known for work on military strategy
Military strategy
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
and constitutional law
Constitutional law
Constitutional law is the body of law which defines the relationship of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary....
and theory
Constitutional theory
Constitutional theory is an area of constitutional law that focuses on the underpinnings of constitutional government. It overlaps with legal theory, constitutionalism, philosophy of law and democratic theory...
, and as the author of Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution (1982), The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History is an historico-philosophical work by Philip Bobbitt. It was first published in 2002 by Alfred Knopf in the US and Penguin in the UK.-Theses:...
(2002) and Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century
Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century
Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century is a work by Philip Bobbitt that calls for a reconceptualization of what he calls "the Wars on Terror." First published in 2008 by Alfred Knopf in the U.S...
(2008).
Family and origins
Philip Bobbitt was born in Temple, TexasTemple, Texas
Temple is a city in Bell County, Texas, United States. Located near the county seat of Belton, Temple lies in the region referred to as Central Texas. Located off Interstate 35, Temple is 65 miles north of Austin and 34 miles south of Waco. In the 2010 Census, Temple's population was 66,102, an...
. He is the only child of Oscar Price Bobbitt (died 1995) (son of Oscar Price Bobbitt and Maude Wisner) and Rebekah Luruth Johnson Bobbitt (1910–1978) (daughter of Sam Johnson and Rebekah Baines). O.P. Bobbitt was a direct descendant of Henry Wisner, the only delegate from New York to vote for the Declaration of Independence and William Bobbitt, a Virginia planter (d. 1673). Rebekah Bobbitt's father and grandfather were members of the Texas Legislature; her great grandfather was president of Baylor University
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...
. Bobbitt is the nephew of Lyndon Baines Johnson, president of the United States from 1963 to 1969; Rebekah Bobbitt was the eldest sister of the 36th president. Between high school and college, Bobbitt resided for the summer in the White House.
Education
Bobbitt graduated with an A.B. in philosophy from Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1971 where his thesis advisor was Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
(thesis: On Wittgenstein and a Philosophical Topology
Topology
Topology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...
). At Princeton he was president of the Ivy Club and Chairman of the Nassau Lit. In 1975 he received his J.D. from Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
, where he was Article Editor of the Yale Law Journal and taught at Yale College. It was at Yale that he met Charles L. Black (1915–2001); Black became a mentor to Bobbitt. He received his M.A and Ph.D. (Modern History) from Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in 1983.
Scholar of law and history
After his graduation from Yale, Philip Bobbitt clerked for Judge Henry Jacob FriendlyHenry Friendly
Henry Jacob Friendly was a prominent judge in the United States, who sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 through 1974 and in senior status until his death by suicide in 1986.- Before the bench :Judge Friendly graduated from...
(1903–1986) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
after which he returned to Austin. His first book Tragic Choices (1978), written with Yale Law Professor (later Dean and Judge of the Second Circuit) Guido Calabresi was a study of how societies make certain decisions---who gets expensive medical care, who is to be drafted into the army, who may have children, and similar choices by which societies are defined. It has won a number of awards and is studied in other disciplines as well as law.
Bobbitt was also at Nuffield College, Oxford
Nuffield College, Oxford
Nuffield College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is an all-graduate college and primarily a research establishment, specialising in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. It is a research centre in the social sciences...
, where he was Anderson Senior Research Fellow and a member of the Modern History faculty from 1983 to 1990; later he was the Marsh Christian Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies
Department of War Studies, KCL
The Department of War Studies at King's College London is a political and military research and teaching facility, considered a world leader in the quality of its work output, as well as for the career prospects of its graduates...
at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
1994-1997. From 1981 to 1982, and again in 2004 he was visiting research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
International Institute for Strategic Studies
The International Institute for Strategic Studies is a British research institute in the area of international affairs. It describes itself as "the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict"...
.
Until 2007, Bobbitt held the A.W. Walker Centennial Chair at the University of Texas, where he taught constitutional law
Constitutional law
Constitutional law is the body of law which defines the relationship of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary....
. In 2005 he was the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
; in 2007, Bobbitt was the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...
, where he accepted a permanent chair later that year; he is now the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia and Director of the Center for National Security there. He remains Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas Law School and Senior Fellow in the Robert S. Strauss
Robert Schwarz Strauss
Robert Schwarz Strauss is a figure in American politics and diplomacy. A Texas political figure, Strauss’s political service dates back to future president Lyndon Johnson’s first congressional campaign in 1937. By the 1950s, he was associated in Texas politics with the conservative faction of...
Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas.
He is a Fellow of the Club of Madrid
Club of Madrid
The Club de Madrid is an independent non-profit organization created to promote democracy and change in the international community. Composed of 80 former Presidents and Prime Ministers from 56 countries, the Club de Madrid is the world’s largest forum of former Heads of State and Government.Among...
, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Pacific Council on International Affairs, the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, a Life Member of the American Law Institute, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
. He serves as a member of the Commission on the Continuity of Government and serves on the Task Force on Law and National Security of the Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
at Stanford. In May 2010 he was appointed to serve as a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law.
Views on Constitutional Law
Like many contemporary scholars, Bobbitt believes that the constitution's durability rests, in part, in the flexible manner in which it can be and has been interpreted since its creation. He emphasizes the "modalities of constitutional argument": 1) structural; 2) textual; 3) ethical; 4) prudential; 5) historical; and 6) doctrinal. He has argued in his books for the recognition of the ethical modality, which has to do with the traditional vision we have of the nation and the role government ought to play (some scholars call this form "argument from tradition"). He first introduced these forms of argument---or modalities---as a way of understanding constitutional review generally in "Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution" (1982), a study of judicial review and then broadened their application to constitutional review generally in Constitutional Interpretation (1993) which deals with non-judicial examples of constitutional argument and decision making. Bobbitt asserts that all branches of government have a duty to assess the constitutionality of their actions. Constitutional Fate is a commonly used text in courses on constitutional law throughout the U.S.Government service
Bobbitt has also served extensively in government, for both Democratic and Republican administrations. In the 1970s, he was Associate Counsel to President Carter for which he received the Certificate of Meritorious Service and worked with Lloyd CutlerLloyd Cutler
Lloyd Norton Cutler was an American attorney, who served as White House Counsel during the Democratic administrations of Presidents Carter and Clinton. He was also the trainer of the former Vice President of the European Parliament and current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, M.P...
on the charter of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(Austin Chronicle, June 21, 2002). He later was Legal Counsel to the Iran-Contra Committee in the U. S. Senate, the Counselor for International Law at the State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
during the George H. W. Bush administration, and served at the National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
, where he was director for Intelligence Programs, senior director for Critical Infrastructure, and senior director for Strategic Planning during Bill Clinton's presidency.
The Shield of Achilles
In 2002 Philip Bobbitt published The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (Knopf), an ambitious 900-page work that explicates a theory, verging on philosophy, of historical change in the modern era, and a history of the development of modern constitutional and international law. Bobbitt traces interacting patterns in the (mainly modern EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an) history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
of strategic innovation
Innovation
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society...
s, major war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
s, peace conferences, international diplomacy and constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
al standards for states
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
. Bobbitt also suggests possible future scenarios and policies appropriate to them.
Arguing that "law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
and strategy
Military strategy
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
are not merely made in history . . . they are made of history" (p. 5), Bobbitt presents a dynamic view of historical change that has a dark, tragic
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
dimension, for he holds that the painful and, indeed, atrocious process of resolving issues that create conflict and war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
tends to cause changes that render obsolete the solution to that conflict (generally a new form of the state possessing a new principle of legitimacy), even as it is established. This tragic dimension is evoked in the title of Bobbitt's book, inspired by the extraordinary last lines of Book 18 of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
, describing a shield fabricated for Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
by the Hephaestus
Hephaestus
Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He is the son of Zeus and Hera, the King and Queen of the Gods - or else, according to some accounts, of Hera alone. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes...
, across the "vast expanse" of which "with all his craft and cunning/the god creates a world of gorgeous immortal work" (trans. Robert Fagles
Robert Fagles
Robert Fagles was an American professor, poet, and academic, best known for his many translations of ancient Greek classics, especially his acclaimed translations of the epic poems of Homer...
).
The Shield of Achilles generated much interest in the diplomatic and political community. Public officials who follow Bobbitt's works include the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
, Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams FRSL, FBA, FLSW is an Anglican bishop, poet and theologian. He is the 104th and current Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England, offices he has held since early 2003.Williams was previously Bishop of Monmouth and...
, who built his Dimbleby Lecture
Richard Dimbleby Lecture
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture was founded in the memory of Richard Dimbleby, the BBC broadcaster. It has been delivered by an influential business or political figure almost every year since 1972 ....
around Bobbitt's thesis; and the former Prime Minister of Australia
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
, John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
, who referred to Bobbit's book in a 2004 address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Lecture.
The book and its thesis has also been discussed by the Vice-President of India, Prince Hassan of Jordan, and other political figures. It is currently being translated into Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
by a team at the University of Beijing.
Terror and Consent
In 2008 Knopf published Bobbitt's Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first CenturyTerror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century
Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century is a work by Philip Bobbitt that calls for a reconceptualization of what he calls "the Wars on Terror." First published in 2008 by Alfred Knopf in the U.S...
, which applied many of the ideas of The Shield of Achilles to the problems of wars on terror. Terror and Consent was on both the New York Times and the London Evening Standard’s best-seller lists and was widely reviewed. Among others, Senator John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
praised the book as “the best book I’ve ever read on terrorism,” and Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
called Bobbitt, “perhaps the most important political philosopher today.” Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
wrote of Terror and Consent, “It may be written by an academic but it is actually required reading for political leaders.” David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
, the leader of the Tory party in the UK put it on a list of summer reading for his parliamentary colleagues in 2008. In Terror & Consent, Bobbitt argued that the only justification for warfare in the 21st century was to protect human rights.
Other activities
Since 1990, Bobbitt has endowed the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, awarded biennially by the Library of CongressLibrary of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. It is the only prize given by the nation for poetry. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, and a former trustee of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. In 2004 Prospect Magazine named him One of Britain's Top 100 Public Intellectuals. He occasionally writes essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, typically on foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
, published in The New York Times, and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
(of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
).
Books
- Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-19-503422-8
- Democracy and Deterrence: The History and Future of Nuclear Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-00523-7
- United States Nuclear Strategy: A Reader. (Co-editor, with Gregory F. Treverton and Lawrence FreedmanLawrence FreedmanSir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA, FKC is Professor of War Studies at King's College London, and was a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair...
.) New York: New York University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8147-1107-3 - Tragic Choices. (Co-author: Guido Calabresi.) New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. ISBN 0-393-09085-X
- Constitutional Interpretation. Blackwell, 1991. ISBN 0-631-16485-5
- The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of HistoryThe Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of HistoryThe Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History is an historico-philosophical work by Philip Bobbitt. It was first published in 2002 by Alfred Knopf in the US and Penguin in the UK.-Theses:...
. Foreword by Michael HowardMichael Howard (historian)Sir Michael Eliot Howard, OM, CH, CBE, MC, FBA is a British military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, and Robert A...
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. ISBN 0-375-41292-1 (Paperback [2003] ISBN 0-385-72138-2), 2003 Grand Prize Winner, Robert W. Hamilton AwardsRobert W. Hamilton Book AwardThe Professor Robert W. Hamilton Book Author Award is presented annually to the best book-length publication by a staff or faculty member of the University of Texas at Austin... - Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first CenturyTerror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first CenturyTerror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century is a work by Philip Bobbitt that calls for a reconceptualization of what he calls "the Wars on Terror." First published in 2008 by Alfred Knopf in the U.S...
. Knopf/Penguin, 2008.
Articles
- "War Powers: An Essay on John Hart Ely's War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath." Michigan Law Quarterly 92, no. 6 (May 1994): 1364-1400. (Argues for the unconstitutionality of the War Powers ResolutionWar Powers ResolutionThe War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a federal law intended to check the power of the President in committing the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States Congress joint resolution; this provides that the...
.)
- "The Warrantless Debate Over Wiretapping." The New York Times, August 22, 2007. (Argues for the necessity of legislation amending the legal framework for the interception of communications from foreign sources.)
- "In This New Age of Warfare We Need Clearer Rules on When to Cross Borders." The Guardian, June 16, 2008.
- "Questions of Security." with John C. Danforth, The New York Times, September 11, 2008.
- "The Flag-Waving is Over: This is how the President can Change the World." The Guardian, November 9, 2008.
- "'Terror' is the Enemy." The New York Times, December 14, 2008.
- "Obama is Right: This is No Time for Posturing on Iran" Evening Standard, June 22, 2009.
- "Calculus and Compassion" The New York Times, July 8, 2009.
External links
- University of Texas staff profile
- Reviews of Terror and Consent (2008)
- Boston Globe, Steve Weinberg, April 13, 2008
- New York Times Book Review, Niall Ferguson, April 13, 2008
- Newsday, Craig Seligman, April 20, 2008
- New York Times (Daily), Edward Rothstein, May 9, 2008
- Daily Telegraph, Rowan Williams, May 17, 2008
- The Spectator, Matthew d’Ancona, May 21, 2008
- Guardian, Vincent Cable, May 31, 2008
- Philadelphia Inquirer, Mark Bowden, June 1, 2008
- Times Higher Education, Alex Danchev, June 12, 2008
- The New York Review of Books, David Cole, December 8, 2008
- The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Elsa Dixler, June 3, 2009.
- Observer article about Professor Bobbitt, Kaitlin Bell, October 14, 2008.
- Video discussion/interview with Philip Bobbitt on Bloggingheads.tvBloggingheads.tvBloggingheads.tv is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers...
- Interview on The Charlie Rose Show
- Global Axess, Engelsberg 2007