Stephen I. 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 New York Times-bestselling book 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 various lower federal civilian and military courts. He is also a frequent witness before Congress, 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, among others, and has served as an expert witness in both U.S. and foreign tribunals. He has also earned a wide range of honors for his scholarship, popular writing, teaching, and service to the profession, including 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.

Beyond the classroom and the courtroom, Vladeck is 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 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 been published in outlets ranging from The New York Times and The Atlantic to Slate and TIME. He is also a 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. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Before joining Georgetown, he taught for nine years at the University of Texas School of Law and, earlier, for eleven years at the University of Miami School of Law and American University Washington College of Law.

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.