Thank you, Laurel.

It is an honour and a pleasure to have been invited to address you today. The American Bar Association is a great organisation admired and listened to by lawyers around the world. It is a privilege therefore to address you, the House of Delegates who represent the lawyers of America at the heart of the ABA.

It is also a pleasure because of the close ties between the American Bar Association and the legal profession in my country. Those links go back many years. In the Middle Temple, one of the great Inns of Court, for example, the generosity of the ABA in helping to rebuild the Great Hall, badly damaged in enemy action is commemorated. At Runnymede the ABA created a memorial to the signing of Magna Carta, the great charter whose principles underlie both our countries’ legal and democratic systems. And over the years the ABA has celebrated its annual meetings in London from time to time, most recently in the year 2000.

The millennium year was a symbolic year to celebrate our close legal traditions in this year. That celebration included the publication by the ABA of a collection of essays by American and British legal scholars and judges entitled “Common Law, Common Values, Common Rights.” I was privileged to be involved in that project which brought together great American judges such as Chief Justice Judith Kay of New York and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and equivalent figures from our own judiciary.

Participating in the project brought home to me how very strong are our ties of the common law and of our common democratic values. It was the common law in which the founding fathers of this country had confidence, brought by the settlers as part of their culture and adapted to suit the social and economic conditions of the New World.

You reflect that common heritage in the ABA’s logo: “Defending Liberty and Pursuing Justice.” These are great and proper ideals which we share. They may not always be comfortable to pursue; it may mean defending clients whose conduct causes revulsion or whose causes are unpopular. But part of defending liberty and pursuing justice is to take on those cases too. Which is why so many who understand these principles were shocked – as I was - when it appeared that a senior Pentagon official was condoning criticism of firms prepared to take on the cases of some of those detained in Guantanamo Bay. There is a long history in this country, as in mine, of lawyers defending those with unpopular causes without it being thought that the lawyers share the same views as their clients. So John Adams, later to become second President of the USA, rose to this challenge when as a young lawyer he courted strong personal unpopularity and a major reduction in his practice to defend British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre of 1770.

In the decision of the House of Lords in Medcalf v Weatherill (2003) the House underlined the importance of this constitutional safeguard describing it as “too often taken for granted.”

“Unpopular and seemingly unmeritorious litigants must be capable of being represented without the advocate being penalised or harassed whether by the Executive, the Judiciary or by anyone else.”

I know that the Pentagon official involved has since apologised and resigned and his remarks repudiated by the Administration. I don’t come to make any personal attack, but I assure you that remarks of that sort are viewed from across the Atlantic as unjust, unacceptable and un-American.

The ABA’s logo encapsulates the ideals for which America has been renowned. Indeed America is a country with a proud tradition as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice – assisting my country to free Europe from tyrants in two world wars. American laws have been a model to which others have aspired.

And I am pleased to be able to pay tribute to the work that the ABA has done and supported, for example, by its sponsorship of support of the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative, the CEELI programme to help bring stable and independent legal systems to countries emerging from communist dictatorship or torn by civil war. This too has been a model of the values the ABA stands for.

My country has worked too in these important areas, supporting countries, their judges and their lawyers to strengthen the rule of law; and to help build capacity to increase access to justice. There is much that has been done. I have been privileged to see some of it and to hear the benefits it has brought- such as the help in training black lawyers in the new South Africa; or the help in rehabilitating prisoners I saw in the slums of Nairobi; or the teaching of principles of human rights law to the judges of Iraq trying to recreate a legal system in which the public can have confidence after 30 years of Baathism.

But I believe we can do more. Which is why we are creating new networks of legal assistance to bring together not only the work that is done by Government and lawyers in the public sector – but lawyers and judges in the private sector. I was privileged recently to chair the first meetings of coordinating committees to bring this into being; and to harness the expertise and wisdom of lawyers and judges with the development skills and resources of government.

I foresee the possibility of greater international cooperation too. We should look, for example, at ways to complement the work other countries and organisations, such as the ABA are doing in these fields. That could be a profitable subject for greater discussion and, if there is interest I would be willing to take this forward.

But as well as sharing a great legal tradition, we share problems too.

One of the most profound, in my view, for our legal system has been how to balance the need to protect our national security and the lives of our citizens after the terrors of 9/11 and the outrages which have followed, including the London underground bombings of 7/7 with the need to protect our civil liberties.

I believe, and have long asserted, that governments have an obligation to protect both: our national security but also our fundamental human rights. Our societies are based on these values; on commitment to liberty and to the rule of law; to our democratic way of life; to freedom of expression and thought; freedom from arbitrary arrest and to fair trial. These liberties were hard fought by our ancestors over the years: from Magna Carta at Runnymede; in the Declaration of Independence and on the fields of battle of the Second World War. They are actually freedoms and liberties and values which the terrorists would destroy. This makes it all the more important that we continue to hold them dear and preserve them.

Striking this balance is not easy. For the threats from terrorism are large. We in my country have not found this easy. We have strengthened our criminal law to meet the conditions of modern terrorism; and we have invested significantly in our front line law enforcement agencies and security and intelligence services.

I do not believe the threat that we face can be ignored. So it is right to consider whether changes to existing laws are needed. Indeed even the great human rights instruments of the world, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – in Article 29 – and the European Convention of Human Rights – in many individual articles and in Article 15 particularly – recognise that some times rights have to be adjusted or exceptionally derogated from in the interests of the community more widely.

But this does not give an unlimited licence to throw away our values for the sake of expediency. It can only be undertaken in a principled way.

I would single out three principles.

First, we must respect the rule of law.

That means adhering to our domestic and international legal obligations. These cannot simply be ignored or set aside.

Respecting the rule of law means too subjecting executive action to the scrutiny of the democratic institutions but also of the courts. Judicial scrutiny is a key part of the rule of law. It was to us shocking that until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise in the Rasul v President Bush decision it was thought appropriate to assert that the legality of detentions in a US facility under US control could not be the subject of consideration by the US courts.

Second, it is essential to maintain the commitment to fundamental values and freedoms. That means that whilst there are some rights which are subject to adjustment to safeguard the rights of others – the right to privacy, for example, must allow for exceptions to help fight crime or preserve the legitimate rights of others – there are other rights which are non-negotiable.

The third principle is that in those cases where it is permissible to adjust the way that rights are protected to meet a new challenge or even to derogate from them, only those changes which are necessary to meet the new challenge – and not merely desirable – and which are proportionate to the challenge can be allowed.

The prohibition on torture is one such right on which I would say we should not compromise – one reason why Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is such an important part of a civilised world. The right to a fair trial is another. In this respect my view of the original Military Commissions for those detained at Guantanamo Bay are well known. Charged by my Prime Minister with considering whether they provided appropriate and sufficient guarantees of a fair trial I considered the rules and regulations in detail over a period of months in the summer and fall of 2003. My clear conclusion was that the Military Commissions did not provide such guarantees. I advised that we should not allow our citizens to stand trial in such circumstances and insisted that they be returned to the UK – which ultimately they were.

I am aware of the changes that have now been made, following the Military Commissions Act signed into law late last year. I welcome some of the changes made – such as the removal of the possibility that detainees would be convicted on the basis of evidence heard in secret and that they had not seen or had a chance to contradict; and the amendments made in Senate to exclude evidence obtained by torture – though there remain some definitional questions of importance. But I am aware of criticisms that remain: of a law which treats aliens in a different way from American citizens; that still allows coerced evidence to be used in certain cases; that excludes the application of habeas corpus. And others. Some – perhaps all of these - will be the subject of further court challenges.

But, it would be misleading if I did not tell you my own view. I have previously stated my view that Guantanamo Bay is unacceptable and should close; it is a symbol of injustice that the long tradition of American justice and liberty ought to see removed at the earliest moment. I have not changed my view. The changes made are too little and too late. There remain fundamental problems with this system of detention. And the symbol remains.

In saying this, I am conscious that some will say that this is not for an outsider to say. That this is America’s decision. I have increasingly been of the view that this is not so. I should explain why.

The struggle against global extremism and terrorism is one that ultimately we will not win by conventional means alone. We increasingly recognise in the United Kingdom that we will only win in the end if we can win the battle for ideas and values. We need to win this struggle at the level of values as much as force. In a major speech given in Los Angeles at last summer, Prime Minister Tony Blair said that to win the war of values we must show that “our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative” and that “we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world.” We have to show, against an Al Qaeda narrative that all that the West does is designed to oppress Muslims, our values are actually those of justice, tough and fearless but fair, and of equality; of the democratic way of life; of the rule of law and of freedom. The presence of Guantanamo makes it so much more difficult to do this. For all of us.

So too in relation to other areas of our activity. We must show that our values of democracy, tolerance, acceptance of diversity and justice are strong. We in my country must also approach new laws as well as our public statements with the need to win this battle for ideas in mind.