Stephen Isaiah Vladeck (born September 26, 1979)[1][2] is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center where he specializes in the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice, especially with relation to the prosecution of war crimes.[3][4][5] Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture,[6] and is a regular contributor to CNN.

Stephen I. Vladeck
Vladeck's 2024 Georgetown Law Headshot
Born
Stephen Isaiah Vladeck

(1979-09-26) September 26, 1979 (age 45)
EducationAmherst College (BA)
Yale University (JD)
RelativesJudith Vladeck (grandmother)
David Vladeck (uncle)
Baruch Vladeck (great-grandfather)

Early life and education

edit

Vladeck, the son of Fredda Wellin Vladeck and Bruce C. Vladeck (administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration from 1993 to 1997, now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), was born and raised in New York City before moving to Silver Spring, Maryland with his family when his father became administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration in 1993.[7] He is the grandson of Judith Vladeck, a labor lawyer who won major sex and age discrimination cases.[8] He is the nephew of Georgetown University Law Center professor, and former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission David Vladeck.

At age 11, Vladeck appeared on the children's game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? as a contestant on the episode titled "Blarney Burglary" in 1992, where the character Vic the Slick steals the Blarney Stone. [9]

As a teenager, Vladeck was heavily involved with quiz bowl, basketball, and baseball at Montgomery Blair High School. He was active in the athletics department at Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a double major in mathematics and history.[10][11] [12]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.[13]

Career

edit

Vladeck clerked for Marsha Berzon and Rosemary Barkett — judges on the 9th and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.[5] He worked on the legal team managed by Neal K. Katyal that successfully challenged the constitutionality of George W. Bush's Guantanamo Military Commissions.[14] In 2005, Vladeck joined the law faculty at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida.[15] In 2007, he joined the faculty at the Washington College of Law at American University.[16] In 2016, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law, where he became the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts.[16][17][18][19][5] Vladeck is a founding member of Lawfare; an executive editor, prior co-editor-in-chief and contributor at Just Security; and a contributor at PrawfsBlawg.[4][20][21] In March 2024, Vladeck announced that he would be joining the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center later that year.[22]

Personal life

edit

Vladeck is Jewish.[23] In 2011, Vladeck married Karen Shafrir, the former managing director of Whisler Partners, a law firm for startup technology companies.[7][24] As of 2024, Karen is the Founder & Managing Partner at Risepoint Search Partners, a boutique legal recruiting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. [25]

Vladeck is a prominent legal commentator on X, formerly Twitter, known for his frequent, accessible insights into Supreme Court decisions and other high-stakes legal issues.[26]

Media

edit

Vladeck co-hosts the National Security Law Podcast with fellow University of Texas law professor Robert Chesney.[27] In 2020, Vladeck began hosting a second podcast, In Loco Parent(i)s with his wife, Karen Shafrir-Vladeck. The podcast is “about parenting and lawyering, in that order.” He also publishes a Substack newsletter with his wife, titled One First –– which recently reached over 40,000 subscribers. [28]

Selected publications

edit

Books

edit
  • Vladeck, Stephen (May 16, 2023). The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-5416-0264-9. Review by Andrew Koppelman.

Scholarship

edit

[29]

Opinion pieces

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ "Karen Shafrir, Stephen Vladeck". The New York Times. November 13, 2022. Retrieved September 23, 2022.
  2. ^ Shafrir Vladeck, Karen [@KSVesq] (September 26, 2021). "Happy birthday to @steve_vladeck! The girls and I are so lucky to have you always by our side" (Tweet). Retrieved September 23, 2022 – via Twitter.
  3. ^ "Professor of Law Stephen I. Vladeck". Georgetown University Law Center. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
  4. ^ a b "Posts by Steve Vladeck". Lawfare. May 16, 2013. Archived from the original on April 30, 2013. Retrieved May 22, 2013. A 2004 graduate of Yale Law School, Steve clerked for Judge Marsha Berzon on the Ninth Circuit and Judge Rosemary Barkett on the Eleventh Circuit.
  5. ^ a b c "Stephen I. Vladeck". University of Texas School of Law. Archived from the original on April 8, 2017.
  6. ^ Cowley, Geoffrey (May 21, 2013). "Obama defends his Guantánamo crackdown". MSNBC. Retrieved May 22, 2013.
  7. ^ a b "Karen Shafrir, Stephen Vladeck". The New York Times. November 13, 2011. p. 16. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  8. ^ Lat, David (January 11, 2007). "Judith P. Vladeck, R.I.P." Above the Law. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  9. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRRpvykYnKg
  10. ^ Binder, Becca (May 23, 2001). "A record-breaking performance". The Amherst Student. No. 25. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  11. ^ "Karen Shafrir, Stephen Vladeck". New York Times. November 13, 2011. p. ST16. Archived from the original on December 3, 2017. Mr. Vladeck, 32, is a law professor and the associate dean for scholarship at American University Washington College of Law. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst and received a law degree from Yale.
  12. ^ https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1851400584902979709
  13. ^ Mianzo, Barbara (October 27, 2017). "Stephen Vladeck '04, "The Past, Present, and Future of the Guantánamo Military Commissions"". Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  14. ^ Thomas, Kaitlin. "Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Neal Katyal Leads Students from Guantánamo to the Supreme Court" (PDF). Yale Law Report (Summer 2006): 37–43. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  15. ^ Nash, Leonard. "A Constitutional Scholar for Our Times". Miami Magazine. No. Spring 2006. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  16. ^ a b "Stephen I. Vladeck, Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Scholarship". Washington College of Law. Archived from the original on April 29, 2013.
  17. ^ Vladeck, Steve (May 22, 2013). "Why Clapper Matters: The Future of Programmatic Surveillance". Lawfare. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
  18. ^ Klein, Kent (June 1, 2011). "Supreme Court: US Muslim Cannot Sue Former Official". Voice of America. A law professor at the American University College of Law, Stephen Vladeck, said the justices agreed unanimously that Ashcroft could not be sued personally. And a majority also rejected the merits of al-Kidd's case.
  19. ^ Carol Rosenberg (October 18, 2016). "Guantánamo judge has U.S. Marshals seize no-show war court witness". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on October 18, 2016. Vladeck questioned the war court's authority to do this. "I have to imagine he has a pretty good habeas claim," he said of Gill's overnight detention to testify. "If the commissions can't usually issue extraordinary writs, what is the government's legal basis for detaining him?"
  20. ^ Vladeck, Steve (June 22, 2020). "Just Security's New Co-Editor-in-Chief". Just Security. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  21. ^ "Just Security Masthead" (PDF). Just Security. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 31, 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  22. ^ Vladeck, Steven (March 5, 2024). "Post by Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeck". X ("Twitter").
  23. ^ Steve Vladeck [@Steve_Vladeck] (December 10, 2019). "'m an American and I'm Jewish. Only one of those is a nationality" (Tweet). Retrieved May 13, 2024 – via Twitter.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  24. ^ "Bio - Karen S. Vladeck". Whistler Partners. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  25. ^ "Press Release". Risepoint Search Partners. Retrieved October 30, 2024.
  26. ^ "Steve Vladeck X Profile". X. Retrieved October 30, 2024.
  27. ^ "The National Security Law Podcast". Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  28. ^ "Steve Vladeck on X". Retrieved October 30, 2024.
  29. ^ Stephen I. Vladeck - C.V.
edit