Ashley Deeks
Ashley Deeks is the E. James Kelly, Jr.-Class of 1965 Research Professor at the University of Virginia Law School. Her primary research and teaching interests are in the areas of international law, national security, intelligence, and the application of new technologies to those fields. She has written articles on the use of force, executive power, secret treaties, the intersection of intelligence 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. Professor 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, a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, and a faculty senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Before joining UVA, 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, intelligence, and the legal framework for the conflict with al-Qaida. In previous positions at the State Department, Deeks advised on international law enforcement and extradition questions. In 2005, she served as the embassy legal adviser 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 J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an 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.