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Laura Donohue

Professor of Law

A.B., Dartmouth; M.A., University of Ulster, Northern Ireland; Ph.D., Cambridge University; J.D., Stanford

Areas of Expertise:

Comparative and Foreign Law, Constitutional Law, Legal History, National Security, Military, War and Peace, Privacy

Laura K. Donohue is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law and a Faculty Affiliate of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law. She writes...

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Laura K. Donohue is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law and a Faculty Affiliate of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law. She writes on the history of national security and counterterrorist law in the United States and United Kingdom. Her most recent book, The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power, Politics, and Liberty (Cambridge University Press, April 2008) analyzes the impact of American and British counterterrorist law on life, liberty, property, privacy, and free speech.  She is currently writing a book on the history of national security law.  Her articles focus on biometric identification; state secrets; surveillance, data collection, and analysis; extended detention and interrogation; antiterrorist finance and material support; biological weapons; scientific speech; and the history of quarantine law.

Professor Donohue has held fellowships at Stanford Law School’s Center for Constitutional Law, Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she was a Fellow in the International Security Program as well as the Executive Session for Domestic Preparedness. In 2001 the Carnegie Corporation named her to its Scholars Program, funding the project, Security and Freedom in the Face of Terrorism. She took up the award at Stanford, where she taught in the Departments of History and Political Science and directed a project for the United States Departments of Justice and State and, later, Homeland Security, on mass-casualty terrorist incidents. In 2008–09 she clerked for Judge John T. Noonan, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  

Professor Donohue is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Advisory Board Member of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).  She obtained her AB in Philosophy (with Honors) from Dartmouth College, her MA in Peace Studies (with Distinction) from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, her JD (with Distinction) from Stanford Law School, and her PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, England.

Recent Scholarship

Forthcoming Works and Works in Progress

  • Laura K. Donohue, The Crime of Terrorism: Material Support, in Dirty Assets: Emerging Issues in the Regulation of Criminal and Terrorist Assets (forthcoming).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, Pandemic Disease, Biological Weapons, and War, in Law and War (Stanford University Press forthcoming).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, National Security Pedagogy: The Role of Simulations, 6 J. Nat'l Sec. L. & Pol'y (forthcoming 2012).    [SSRN] [Gtown Law]

Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals

  • Laura K. Donohue, Technological Leap, Statutory Gap, and Constitutional Abyss: Remote Biometric Identification Comes of Age, 97 Minn. L. Rev. 407-559 (2012).    [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]

Book Chapters and Collected Works

  • Laura K. Donohue, Transplantation, in Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy 67-87 (Victor V. Ramraj, Michael Hor & Kent Roach eds., New York: Cambridge University Press 2d ed. 2012).    [BOOK]

All Scholarship 2000 - Present

Forthcoming Works and Works in Progress

  • Laura K. Donohue, The Crime of Terrorism: Material Support, in Dirty Assets: Emerging Issues in the Regulation of Criminal and Terrorist Assets (forthcoming).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, Pandemic Disease, Biological Weapons, and War, in Law and War (Stanford University Press forthcoming).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, National Security Pedagogy: The Role of Simulations, 6 J. Nat'l Sec. L. & Pol'y (forthcoming 2012).    [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Biodefense and Constitutional Constraints, Nat'l Security & Armed Conflict L. Rev. (forthcoming).    [SSRN] [Gtown Law]

Books

  • Laura K. Donohue, The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power, Politics, and Liberty (New York: Cambridge University Press 2008).    [BOOK]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Counter-Terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom, 1922-2000 (Portland, Or.: Irish Academic Press 2001).    [BOOK]

Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals

  • Laura K. Donohue, Technological Leap, Statutory Gap, and Constitutional Abyss: Remote Biometric Identification Comes of Age, 97 Minn. L. Rev. 407-559 (2012).    [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
  • Laura K. Donohue, The Limits of National Security, 48 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1573-1756 (2011).    [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
  • Laura K. Donohue, The Shadow of State Secrets, 159 U. Pa. L. Rev. 77-216 (2010).    [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
  • Laura K. Donohue, The Perilous Dialogue, 97 Cal. L. Rev. 357-392 (2009).    [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Antiterrorist Finance 2.0, 10 Int'l Stud. Rev. 639-641 (2008) (reviewing Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Thomas J. Biersteker & Sue E. Eckert eds. 2008)).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, Constitutional and Legal Challenges to the Anti-Terrorist Finance Regime, 43 Wake Forest L. Rev. 643-697 (2008).    [HEIN] [L] [W]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Terrorism and Trial by Jury: The Vices and Virtues of British and American Criminal Law, 59 Stan. L. Rev. 1321-1364 (2007).    [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Anglo-American Privacy and Surveillance, 96 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1059-1208 (2006).    [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Anti-Terrorist Finance in the United Kingdom and United States, 27 Mich. J. Int'l L. 303-435 (2006).    [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Security and Freedom on the Fulcrum, 17 Terrorism & Pol. Violence 69-87 (2005).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, Terrorist Speech and the Future of Free Expression, 27 Cardozo L. Rev. 233-341 (2005).    [HEIN] [L] [W]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Mediating Terror, 5 Int'l Stud. Rev. 232-237 (2003) (reviewing Brigitte L. Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism & Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries (Yonah Alexander ed., 2002)).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, 25 Stud. Conflict & Terrorism 203-205 (2002) (reviewing Jonathan B. Tucker, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox (2001)).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, 116 Pol. Sci. Q. 656-658 (2001-2002) (reviewing Rodney Wallis, Lockerbie: The Story and the Lessons (2001)).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, Bias, National Security and Military Tribunals, 1 Criminology & Pub. Pol'y 339-344 (2002).    [HEIN] [W]
  • Laura K. Donohue & Juliette N. Kayyem, Federalism and the Battle over Counterterrorist Law: State Sovereignty, Criminal Law Enforcement, and National Security, 25 Stud. Conflict & Terrorism 1-18 (2002).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, Terrorism & Pol. Violence, Autumn 2001, at 190-191 (reviewing Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (2000)).   
  • Laura K. Donohue, In the Name of National Security: US Counterterrorist Measures, 1960–2000, Terrorism & Pol. Violence, Autumn 2001, at 15-60.   

Book Chapters and Collected Works

  • Laura K. Donohue, Transplantation, in Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy 67-87 (Victor V. Ramraj, Michael Hor & Kent Roach eds., New York: Cambridge University Press 2d ed. 2012).    [BOOK]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Anti-Terrorism Legislation: Civil Liberty and Judicial Alteration, in Democratic Responses to Terrorism 101-156 (Leonard Weinberg ed., New York: Routledge 2008).    [BOOK]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Britain's Counterterrorism Policy, in How States Fight Terrorism: Policy Dynamics in the West 17-58 (Doron Zimmermann & Andreas Wenger eds., Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2007).    [BOOK]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Terrorism and the Counter-Terrorist Discourse, in Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy 13-36 (Victor V. Ramraj, Michael Hor & Kent Roach eds., New York: Cambridge University Press 2005).    [BOOK]
  • Laura K. Donohue, Fear Itself: Counterterrorism, Individual Rights, and U.S. Foreign Relations Post 9-11, in Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment: Readings and Interpretations 313-338 (Russell D. Howard & Reid L. Sawyer, eds. Guilford, Conn.: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin rev. 2004).    [BOOK]

View all scholarship
Laura Donohue Profile
  • Email:

    lkdonohue@law.georgetown.edu

  • Address:

    600 New Jersey Avenue N.W.
    Washington, DC 20001

  • Office Location:

    McDonough 470

  • Assistant:

    Betsy Kuhn

  • Phone:

    202-662-9455

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