National Security Research Group

The Harvard Law School National Security Research Group (NSRG) is a student-led initiative that will work in collaboration with the Harvard National Security and the Law Society to produce high-quality reports on pressing national security matters.  NSRG is non-partisan and unaffiliated with any particular national security agenda or approach, and it will remain open to people of all backgrounds and viewpoints.

NSRG's research product will primarily be descriptive in nature.  Examples of possible projects include:

·       Reviewing bills before Congress

·       Finding and aggregating lower court and state court decisions on a particular topic

·       Creating viewpoint-neutral reviews of legal precedent on a particular topic

·       Researching and determining customary international law (e.g., identifying general and consistent practices of states)

·       Researching and reporting treaty adoption and compliance

·       Reviewing draft treaties

·       Compiling and reviewing foreign court decisions related to national security law

·       Researching and reporting historical actions by Congress and the President

·       Researching and reporting legislative history

·       Compiling and reviewing congressional testimony related to national security

·       Collecting the opinions of experts

·       Creating literature reviews

·       Identifying areas for further research

While it may be appropriate to make policy recommendations in certain circumstances, NSRG will try to avoid adopting aggressive policy stances so as not to undermine the credibility of its descriptive product.  NSRG will consider different procedures for adopting reports; NSRG may choose to adopt reports by supermajority vote in order to ensure a moderate and consistent voice.

The NSRG operational model will be as follows.  Academics, policy makers, and legal practitioners will submit research requests through an online form.  As the requests come in, NSRG will evaluate them for feasibility and potential impact, and will promptly inform applicants whether NSRG will be able to take on their project.  In certain circumstances, it may be appropriate for NSRG to request deferred start date for an applicant's project.

NSRG will be principally organized around discrete projects.  Each time NSRG takes on a new project, a Project Manager will be appointed to lead the research team responsible for that project.  For some projects it may be appropriate to appoint more than one Project Manager.  The number of team members assigned to each project will vary depending upon the difficulty of the project and the availability of potential team members.

It will likely take some time before NSRG is well-known enough that it can rely solely on research requests submitted by outsiders.  In the meanwhile, the group will generate research requests internally by taking ideas from affiliated faculty members and from the membership.  Once the group has produced several high-quality reports, the reports will be posted on the NSRG website and NSRG will attempt to publicize itself as widely as possible (primarily through national security-related websites and e-mail lists).