| Stephen I. Vladeck | |
| Birth Name: | Stephen Isaiah Vladeck |
| Birth Date: | 26 September 1979 |
| Birth Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Education: | Amherst College (BA) Yale University (JD) |
| Relatives: | Judith Vladeck (grandmother) David Vladeck (uncle) Baruch Vladeck (great-grandfather) |
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] Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture,[4] and is a regular contributor to CNN.
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.[5] He is the grandson of Judith Vladeck, a labor lawyer who won major sex and age discrimination cases.[6] 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. [7]
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.[8] [9] [10] 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.[11]
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.[12] In 2005, Vladeck joined the law faculty at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida.[13] 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, where he became the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts. 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.[14] [15] In March 2024, Vladeck announced that he would be joining the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center later that year.[16]
Vladeck is Jewish.[17] In 2011, Vladeck married Karen Shafrir, the former managing director of Whisler Partners, a law firm for startup technology companies.[18] As of 2024, Karen is the Founder & Managing Partner at Risepoint Search Partners, a boutique legal recruiting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. [19]
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.[20]
Vladeck co-hosts the National Security Law Podcast with fellow University of Texas law professor Robert Chesney.[21] 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. [22]