ABA Recognizes John Norton Moore with Highest Honor in National Security Law

The American Bar Association on Friday recognized University of Virginia law professor John Norton Moore for his more than four decades of public service and leadership in the field of national security law.

The ABA's Standing Committee on Law and National Security presented Moore with the Morris I. Leibman Award in Law and National Security, which is among the highest honors given to national security lawyers.

"Professor John Norton Moore is widely considered the father of the academic discipline of National Security Law, having taught the nation's first class on the subject in 1969," according to the ABA's award citation.

Moore, the Law School's Walter L. Brown Professor of Law, in 1981 co-founded UVA Law's Center for National Security Law, the world's first organization devoted to the field. And he also edited a 1,400-page law school casebook titled "National Security Law," as well as other teaching materials, which allowed the emerging subject to be taught more easily at other law schools.

Moore also served four terms as chairman of the ABA's Standing Committee on Law and National Security from 1982-86.

From 1985 to 1991, Moore chaired the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, one of six presidential appointments he has held. From 1973 to 1976, he was chair of the National Security Council Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea and ambassador and deputy special representative of the president to the law of the sea conference. He previously served as the counselor on international law to the State Department. And, with the deputy attorney general of the United States, he was co-chair in March 1990 of the U.S.-USSR talks in Moscow and Leningrad on the rule of law.

From 1991-93, during the Gulf War and its aftermath, Moore was the principal legal adviser to the Ambassador of Kuwait to the United States and to the Kuwait delegation to the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission.