Experts

Ashley Deeks

Faculty Senior Fellow
deeks-cv-9-18.pdf

Fast Facts

  • Served in the Biden Administration as White House associate counsel
  • Member, U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on International Law
  • Member, board of editors, American Journal of International Law
  • Senior fellow, Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare
  • Expertise on international law and litigation, national security law, terrorism

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • War and Terrorism
  • Domestic Affairs
  • Law and Justice

Ashley Deeks is the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, which she joined in 2012 after two years as an academic fellow at Columbia Law School. Her primary research and teaching interests are in the areas of international law, national security, intelligence, and the laws of war. She has written articles on the use of force, executive power, secret treaties, the intersection of national security and international law, and the laws of armed conflict. She is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law, and she serves as a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog. Deeks also serves on the boards of editors of the American Journal of International Law and the Journal of National Security Law and Policy. She is the supervising editor for AJIL Unbound, and is a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare.

Deeks served in the Biden Administration as White House associate counsel and deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council. Before joining Columbia in 2010, she served as the assistant legal adviser for political-military affairs in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor, where she worked on issues related to the law of armed conflict, the use of force, conventional weapons, and the legal framework for the conflict with al-Qaida. She also provided advice on intelligence issues. In previous positions at the State Department, Deeks advised on international law enforcement, extradition, and diplomatic property questions. In 2005, she served as the embassy legal advisor at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, during Iraq’s constitutional negotiations. Deeks was a 2007–08 Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow and a visiting fellow in residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Deeks received her JD with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as comment editor on the Law Review. After graduation, she clerked for Judge Edward R. Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Ashley Deeks News Feed

UVA Law School
Ashley Deeks Named Head of New National Security Law Center
Professor Ashley Deeks, a national security law expert and former official with the U.S. State Department, has been named director of the National Security Law Center at the University of Virginia School of Law. The center will help support the academic contributions of faculty, and serve as a hub for professors and working professionals to exchange ideas, as well as create increased opportunities for students interested in national security law.
Ashley Deeks UVA School of Law
Lieber Institute
Will Autonomy in U.S. Military Operations Centralize Legal Decisionmaking?
The growth of machine learning tools in military operations raises new questions about where the most critical decision points are located. Are the most important political, operational, and legal decisions made out in the field, where the tools are used, or in headquarters, at the time the tools are developed? This post argues that—perhaps ironically—the growing use of autonomy may end up centralizing key military and legal decisions.
Ashley Deeks West Point Lieber Institute
Lawfare
Did Former Green Berets Violate the 1794 Neutrality Act by Invading Venezuela?
Members of Congress and other observers, however, have continued to ask questions about their possible involvement, noting the Trump administration’s hostile posture toward the Maduro government; its strong support for Guaido; and ties between Goudreau and the Trump campaign, which Goudreau openly advertised on the Silvercorp website. The answers to these questions are essential both for clarifying what happened in Venezuela and for determining whether Goudreau or any of his associates violated U.S. law—in particular, the 1794 Neutrality Act.
Ashley Deeks Lawfare
Lawfare
Prosecuting Purposeful Coronavirus Exposure as Terrorism
In the past week, some state prosecutors have started to charge coronavirus-related cases as terroristic threat and assault cases. But using terrorism statutes as tools to deter this behavior may prove problematic. Prosecuting these cases as terrorism—a charge that tends to carry heftier sentences than other criminal offenses—may allow the government to aggressively deter any malicious spread of the coronavirus. At the same time, however, courts and the public may view such prosecutions as improperly stretching terrorism statutes.
Ashley Deeks Lawfare
War on the Rocks
How the endless war came home
Companies working for the U.S. military invented duct tape. And Silly Putty. And undershirts. The military needed waterproof tape to seal ammunition boxes, a synthetic rubber substitute to compensate for rubber shortages, and something to protect uniforms from wear and tear. Military necessity drove these and other technological advances, which were tailored to the enemies the military was fighting and the nature of conflict at the time. The endless war against al-Qaeda and its associates has similarly fostered a range of technological inventions or advancements, driven by the nature of the foes America has been fighting for two decades.
Ashley Deeks War on the Rocks
Lawfare
The Lawfare Podcast Special Edition: Law and the Soleimani Strike
On Friday, the Lawfare Podcast hosted a conversation on the wide-ranging policy implications of the U.S. strike that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ leader Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, deputy commander of Iraq’s quasi-official Popular Mobilization Forces and leader of the Iraqi militia and PMF Keta’ib Hezbollah.Today’s special edition episode leaves the policy debate behind to zero-in on the law behind the strike. Law of war and international law experts Scott R. Anderson, Bobby Chesney, Jack Goldsmith, Ashley Deeks and Samuel Moyn join Benjamin Wittes to discuss the domestic and international law surrounding the strike, how the administration might legally justify it, what the president might do next and how Congress might respond.
Ashley Deeks Lawfare