Michael Chertoff -Homeland Security

From The Weekly Standard - Law, Loyalty, and Terror: "What we can say is that the government's actions after September 11 reflected a consciousness of history and of the historical moment. Excesses of the past were not repeated. A balance was sought and, I hope, achieved.

That balance was struck in the first flush of the emergency. If history shows anything, however, it shows that we must be prepared to review and if necessary recalibrate that balance. We should get about doing so, in the light of the experience of our forebears and the experience of our own time.

We are at a transition point in the evolution of legal doctrine to govern the armed conflict with terror. How history will judge what has been done is for our successors to determine. The triumph is that our successors will be alive and free to determine that history.

[Michael Chertoff, a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division from 2001 to 2003. This article is adapted from remarks he delivered October 10 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law school.] "