Stephen Vladeck


Stephen Vladeck is the A. Dalton Cross Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he specializes in national security law, especially with relation to the prosecution of war crimes. Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture, and is a regular contributor to CNN.

Life and career

Vladeck is the son of Fredda Wellin Vladeck and Bruce C. Vladeck, who was the administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration from 1993 to 1997. He is the grandson of Judith Vladeck, a labor lawyer who won major sex and age discrimination cases.
Vladeck was a two-sport athlete at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, and he was active in the athletics department at Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a double major in mathematics and history. His J.D. degree is from Yale Law School, where he was the executive director of the Yale Law Journal and was the student director of the Balancing Civil Liberties & National Security Post-9/11 Litigation Project. He was also awarded the Potter Stewart Prize and Harlan Fiske Stone Prize.
Vladeck clerked for Marsha Berzon and Rosemary Barkett — judges on the 9th and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He worked on the legal team managed by Neal K. Katyal that successfully challenged the Constitutionality of George W. Bush's Guantanamo Military Commissions. In 2005 Vladeck joined the law faculty at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. In 2007 he joined the faculty at the Washington College of Law at American University. In 2016 he joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law. Vladeck is a founding member of Lawfare, and a contributor at PrawfsBlawg.
Vladeck married Karen Shafrir in 2011.

Media

On March 30, 2017, CNN quoted Vladeck's opinion on whether the Supreme Court's should agree to hear two new cases of individuals held at Guantanamo. Vladeck had submitted Amicus curiae opinions when Nashiri v. Obama and Bahlul v. Obama were heard by a Washington DC appeals court.
On December 7, 2017, Vladeck wrote for NBC News that the courts should allow the defamation suit brought by Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant, against Donald J. Trump, to proceed. Zervos claimed that Trump sexually assaulted her in 2007 and made false statements about her while speaking about the claims during the 2016 campaign. In Clinton v. Jones, Paula Jones sued a sitting President. Trump's lawyers argued that Clinton v. Jones was a federal case, and therefore doesn't apply to Zervos' state case. Vladeck argued that the same logic of Clinton v. Jones would hold for Zervos' case.
Vladeck co-hosts the Podcast with fellow University of Texas law professor Robert Chesney.

Academic publications

Books

State Law, the Westfall Act, and the Nature of the Bivens Question, 161 U. PA. L. REV. 509
War and Justiciability, 49 SUFFOLK L. REV. 47
Inchoate Liability and the Espionage Act: The Statutory Framework and the Freedom of the Press, 1 HARV. L. & POL'Y REV. 219
Ludecke's Lengthening Shadow: The Disturbing Prospect of War Without End, 2 J. NAT'L SEC. L. & POL'Y 53
The D.C. Circuit After Boumediene, 41 SETON HALL L. REV. 1451