Ashley Deeks joined the Law School in 2012 as an associate professor of law
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 serves as a
senior contributor to the Lawfare blog. 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 Adviser, 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. Deeks received her J.D. 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.