Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Sklerov, judge advocate general for Commander, Submarine Group 9, was awarded the Keithe E. Nelson Distinguished Service Writing Award for top publication in the country in the field of Military Law for 2009 at an awards luncheon in San Francisco, Calif., Aug. 6.

Sklerov’s article, “Solving the Dilemma of State Responses to Cyberattacks: A Justification for the Use of Active Defenses Against States Who Neglect their Duty to Prevent”, was a scholarly legal article dealing with state responses to cyberattacks and proposed a new legal framework for analyzing and responding to international cyberattacks.  It was published in the winter 2009 edition of The Military Law Review.

“Writing this involved a lot of research,” said Sklerov.  “I probably spent about 1,000 hours researching and writing it.”

The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Armed Forces Law reads all of the nominated articles and selects the one it thinks will have the biggest impact on military operations. 

“It’s nice to receive this recognition, and the publicity of the award might prompt policy makers to review my article which was the reason I wrote it.”

Sklerov was presented the award by Vice Adm. James Houck, Judge Advocate General of the Navy, at the luncheon, in front of fellow JAGs from all branches of the services and his wife and son.

“Maybe the nicest thing of all was that my wife, Sheila, and son, Sebastian travelled to San Francisco with me to receive the award and it was a nice event to share as a family,” said Sklerov.