Stephen Vladeck

Stephen I. Vladeck is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Scholarship at American University Washington College of Law. His teaching and research focus on federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, national security law, and international criminal law. A nationally recognized expert on the role of the federal courts in the war on terrorism, he was part of the legal team that successfully challenged the Bush Administration's use of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), and has co-authored party and amicus briefs in a host of other major lawsuits, many of which have challenged the U.S. government’s surveillance and detention of terrorism suspects. Vladeck, who is a co-editor of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security and counterterrorism law casebooks, has authored reports on related topics for a wide range of organizations, including the First Amendment Center, the Constitution Project, and the ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. Professor Vladeck has won awards for his teaching, his scholarship, and his service to the law school. He is a member of the American Law Institute, a senior editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of National Security Law and Policy, a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog, the Chair-Elect of the Section on Federal Courts of the Association of American Law Schools, the Supreme Court Fellow at the Constitution Project, and a fellow at the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. A 2004 graduate of Yale Law School, Vladeck clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. While a law student, he was Executive Editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Student Director of the Balancing Civil Liberties & National Security Post-9/11 Litigation Project, and he was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize for Best Team Performance in Moot Court and the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for Outstanding Moot Court Oralist. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001, where he wrote his senior thesis on "Leipzig's Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present."