Stephen Vladeck, the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Federal Courts at the Georgetown University Law Center, is a nationally recognized expert on the Supreme Court, the federal courts, national security law, and military justice. He is the author of The Court We Need: What’s Really Wrong With the Supreme Court—and How to Fix It, forthcoming from Viking Books on May 4, 2027, and of the New York Times-bestselling The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, which won the 2024 Order of the Coif Book Award and the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts.

A highly regarded appellate advocate, Vladeck has argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than 20 before lower federal civilian and military courts. He is a frequent congressional witness, having testified before committees including the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and has served as an expert witness in U.S. and foreign tribunals. His honors for scholarship, popular writing, teaching, and service include the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. And he is the inaugural holder of the National Institute of Military Justice’s Professor Edmund Morgan Chair in Military Justice.

Vladeck is also a leading public voice on the work of the Supreme Court. He serves as CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and writes One First, a popular weekly Substack newsletter about the Court. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Supreme Court Review, and his popular writing has appeared in outlets ranging from The New York Times and The Atlantic to Slate and TIME. He is also co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks.

Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004, where he was an executive editor of the Yale Law Journal, won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist, and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. He earned his B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001, and clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the Eleventh Circuit. Before joining the Georgetown faculty, he taught for eight years at the University of Texas School of Law (2016–24) and, earlier, at the University of Miami School of Law (2005–07) and American University Washington College of Law (2007–16).

Vladeck serves on the Board of Trustees of Amherst College and of Earthjustice, the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization. A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, he lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners), and their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney.

For speaking inquiries, please contact Hayley Shear from the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com.