Faculty Co-Chair
Core Faculty
- Philip C. Bobbitt
Philip C. Bobbitt is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served as Associate Counsel to the President, the Counselor on International Law at the State Department, Legal Counsel to the Senate Iran-Contra Committee, and Senior Director at the National Security Council. He has published seven books, most recently the New York Times-reviewed Terror and Consent.
- Matthew Waxman
Matthew C. Waxman served in senior positions at the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and National Security Council before joining the Columbia Law faculty. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, where he studied international relations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he also serves as Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law & Foreign Policy.
- David Pozen
David Pozen is an associate professor of law, with research interests in several areas of public law and in nonprofit organizations. From 2010 to 2012, he served as special advisor to the U.S. Department of State’s Legal Adviser, Harold Hongju Koh. Previously, Pozen clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court (2009-2010) and for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (2008-2009). From 2007 to 2008, Pozen served as special assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senior Fellow
- Scott R. Anderson is a Senior Fellow with the National Security Law Program as well as a Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is also senior editor and counsel for Lawfare, an online publication committed to the analysis of hard national security choices.
A former U.S. diplomat and experienced international lawyer, Mr. Anderson previously served as an attorney-adviser for the U.S. Department of State and as the legal adviser for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. In these capacities, he advised policymakers on domestic and international legal issues relating to U.S. foreign and national security policy, particularly as they relate to the Middle East and North Africa. Among other issues, his portfolio included bilateral relations with Iraq, counter-ISIS efforts in Iraq and Syria, select Israeli-Palestinian issues, terrorism-related civil litigation, U.S. and international economic sanctions, and the Yemen conflict. He also helped to represent the Department in a number of litigation and international arbitration matters, including Zivotofsky v. Kerry and other matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Anderson was previously an International Affairs Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, during which time he was affiliated with Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School. He was also a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School, he and his wife Elizabeth live in Washington, D.C.
Affiliated and Related Faculty and Fellows
- Sarah Cleveland
Sarah Cleveland is a noted expert in international law and the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, with particular interests in the status of international law in U.S. domestic law, international humanitarian law, human rights law, and the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations. From 2009 to 2011, she served as the Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State.
- Daniel Richman
Daniel Richman is an expert in criminal procedure, evidence, and federal criminal law. Before entering academia in 1992, he was the Chief Appellate Attorney and an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. He has regularly testified in before Congress and is currently a special advisor to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- Richard B. Zabel
Richard B. Zabel is currently the Chief of the Criminal Division at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. From 1999 until 2009, prior to rejoining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Zabel was a partner at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP where he was co-head of the firmwide litigation practice. His practice focused on white-collar criminal defense, SEC investigations, corporate internal investigations, complex civil litigation, and appeals.
- Steven Shapiro
Steven Shapiro is the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nation's oldest and largest civil liberties organization. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights First and the Policy Committee of Human Rights Watch, as well as the Advisory Committees of the U.S. Program and Asia Program of Human Rights Watch.
- Lee Gelernt
Lee Gelernt has been an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union since 1992 and currently holds the position of Deputy Director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, where he works on immigration and national security issues.
- Michael W. Doyle
Michael W. Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Political Science at Columbia Law School. Michael was the Assistant secretary-general and special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2001–2003, and he was appointed member and chair of the board of UNDEF (the UN Democracy Fund) for 2006 through 2013.
- Gabor Rona
Gabor Rona is the International Legal Director of Human Rights First. He advises Human Rights First programs on questions of international law and coordinates international human rights litigation. He also represents Human Rights First with governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media and the public on matters of international human rights and international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
- Lori Fisler Damrosch
Lori Fisler Damrosch is the Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Columbia Law School. Damrosch’s principal areas of interest are public international law and the U.S. law of foreign relations.
- Michel Paradis
Michel Paradis currently serves as a senior attorney for the Department of Defense, Office of the Chief Defense Counsel. In that role, he is regularly appointed to represent detainees held at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has argued numerous cases before the nation’s highest courts and has contributed to scholarly publications on the subjects of international humanitarian law and terrorism.
- Brendan McGuire
Brendan R. McGuire is a Partner at WilmerHale. He served for nearly 11 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. McGuire concluded his tenure as Chief of the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. Among other cases, he oversaw the trial teams that secured convictions of Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, Usama Bin Laden’s son-in-law and the most senior al Qaeda leader to have been convicted in an Article III court; Khalid al Fawwaz, Usama bin Laden’s media representative at the time of al Qaeda’s bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, a/k/a “Abu Hamza,” a radical British cleric who attempted to establish a terrorist training camp in the United States.
- Jeremy Kessler
Jeremy K. Kessler, Associate Professor of Law, is a legal historian whose scholarship focuses on First Amendment law, administrative law, and constitutional law generally. He joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 2015 and is co-director of Columbia University's 20th Century Politics and Society Workshop and Columbia Law School's Legal History Workshop. He also serves on the board of the American Society for Legal History and the ABA’s Committee on the History of Administrative Law.
- Jeong-Ho Roh
Jeong-Ho Roh is a recognized expert on South and North Korean law and legal institutions. He has served in various governmental advisory roles, including as legal advisor to the Korean Ministry of National Unification on the KEDO North Korean Light-water Reactor Project.