of the United States, 2001–2009). Although he was only acting Secretary of Defense, and never confirmed as the permanent Secretary, he became the third member of his family to hold a position as civilian head of a military department, following his great-great-grandfather Alphonso Taft (under President Ulysses S. Grant) and his great-grandfather William Howard Taft (under President Theodore Roosevelt). Taft served as U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, which has the rank of ambassador, from 1989 to 1992, during the Gulf War. During the Clinton administration, Taft entered private practice with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Service in George W. Bush administration After the election of 2000, George W. Bush appointed Taft to serve as chief legal advisor to the United States Department of State under Secretary of State Colin Powell, with whom he was reportedly friends. This appointment was technically a significantly lower appointment than he had held in other administrations, but it permitted him to work with his wife, Julia Taft, a top State Department official in charge of refugees who also served during the Clinton administration. While serving as Legal Adviser, Taft wrote two seminal law journal articles regarding the views of the United States on the legality of the use of military force. First, in connection with the decision of the International Court of Justice in the Oil Platforms case, Taft countered a series of propositions that the court appeared to accept regarding the principles governing the use of force. This included his conclusion that "There is no requirement in international law that a State exercising its right of self-defence must use the same degree or type of force used by the attacking State in its most recent attack. Rather, the proportionality of the measures taken in self-defence is to be judged according to the nature of the threat being addressed." Second, Taft coauthored (with Todd F. Buchwald) an article in the Americal Journal of International Law that set forth the official United States Government view regarding the permissibility under international law of the use of force by the United States and Coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The article concluded that the preemptive use of force in Iraq is lawful where, as in Iraq, "it represents an episode in an ongoing broader conflict initiated--without question-- by the opponent and where, as here, it is consistent with the