by Bruce Tucker Smith

About the author: Bruce Tucker Smith is a U.S. administrative-law judge and serves as a reservist in the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Department.

The United States is at war and, in these extraordinary times, the law must be wielded not as a shield but as a sword. The legal response to the terrorist attacks must be an integral part of, not distinct from, America’s war effort. Tribunals will be swift, certain and fair. They will provide basic due process and will vindicate an aggrieved nation. Above all, the tribunals will render justice quickly: Justice delayed is most assuredly justice denied.

Unaccustomed as we are to hearing a president speak as a wartime commander in chief, ours has done...