Moderator\u27s Report: Legal Experts\u27 Workshop on the Future Global Legal Order

In late 2006, as part of its multifaceted effort to help the Chief of Naval Operations develop a new, contemporary maritime strategy for the nation, the Naval War College convened a “Delphi group” of experts—in this case, in international law—to provide the maritime strategy development team a candid assessment of the probable state of the global legal order in 2020. The workshop, chaired by Craig H. Allen, the Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law, was held 31 October–1 November 2006 in the College’s Decision Support Center (equipped with an advanced World Wide Web–based group collaboration and decision-support system), in the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. In addition to four faculty members of the College’s International Law Department, thirty-eight outside experts participated, drawn from the United States and ten other nations. The group included military and coast guard legal advisers; attorneys from the Defense, State, Justice, and Homeland Security Departments and from the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia; law professors; an attorney specializing in commercial maritime law; and the director of the United Nations Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea