Mary B. DeRosa served as Deputy Assistant and Deputy Counsel to the President, and as National Security Council Legal Adviser in the Obama Administration. After leaving the White House in the Summer of 2011, she served as Alternate Representative of the United States to the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly, an Ambassador-level position with the US Mission to the United Nations. Prior to joining the Obama Administration in 2009, Ms. DeRosa was Chief Counsel for National Security for the Senate Judiciary Committee, working for the Chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy. She has also been a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served on the staff of the Clinton Administration National Security Council as Legal Adviser and Deputy Legal Adviser, and was Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. Before joining the government, Ms. DeRosa was in private practice at Arnold & Porter. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Richard Cardamone, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Scholarship

Selected Contributions to Other Publications

Mary B. DeRosa & Ashley Nicolas, The President and Nuclear Weapons: Authorities, Limits, and Process (Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dec. 2019).
[WWW] [Gtown Law] [SSRN]

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

Brief of Amici Curiae Former National Security Officials in Support of Respondents, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, No. 20-843 (U.S. Sept. 21, 2021).
[WWW]

Book Chapters & Collected Works

Mary B. DeRosa, Congressional Oversight of US Intelligence Activities, in National Security Intelligence and Ethics 216-231 (Seumas Miller, Mitt Regan & Patrick Walsh eds., New York: Routledge 2022).
[BOOK]
Mary B. DeRosa & Mitt Regan, Accountability for Targeted Killing, in Counter-Terrorism: The Ethical Issues 61-76 (Seumas Miller, Adam Henschke & Jonas Feltes ed., Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar 2021).

Forthcoming Works - Book Chapters & Collected Works

Mary DeRosa, Lawyering and the Use of Force in Libya and Syria Operations, in Research Handbook of Law and Diplomacy (David P. Stewart & Margaret E. McGuinness eds., Edward Elgar forthcoming).
In The News
July 7, 2016

The White House announced, on July 7, 2016, President Obama's intention to appoint Distinguished Visitor from Practice and Co-Director of Global Law Scholars Program Mary B. DeRosa to the Intelligence Advisory Board.

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