Ashley S. Deeks
University of Virginia · Law
Active 1997–2026
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About
Ashley S. Deeks serves as vice dean of the University of Virginia School of Law and is a senior fellow at the Miller Center. She joined UVA Law in 2012 as an associate professor of law after serving as an academic fellow at Columbia Law School. Her primary research and teaching interests are in international law, national security, intelligence, and the laws of war. Deeks has authored numerous articles on topics such as the use of force, executive power, sanctions, secret treaties, and the intersection of national security and international law, and she is a contributing editor to the Lawfare blog. Her professional experience includes serving as White House associate counsel and deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council during the 2021-22 period, as well as working at the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, where she advised on issues related to the law of armed conflict, the use of force, and intelligence matters. She has also served as the embassy legal adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during Iraq’s constitutional negotiations. Deeks holds a J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as comment editor on the Law Review. She has authored textbooks and contributed chapters on international law and the laws of armed conflict, and her scholarly work includes articles on AI, cyber strategy, and international security law.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Computer Science
- Economics
- Business
- Political economy
- Law and economics
- Law
Selected publications
High-Tech International Law
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 32 citations
1st authorCorrespondingData-driven algorithmic tools allow their users to process large amounts of data quickly, extract patterns from the data that humans cannot otherwise detect, and make reliable predictions. These tools have proven valuable in domestic legal practice, negotiations, and other fields closely related to international law. Yet governments and their international lawyers have ignored this new wave of tools as they conduct international relations. This article argues that governments should begin to use…
Delegating war initiation to machines
Australian Journal Of International Affairs · 2024 · 8 citations
1st authorCorrespondingThe use of autonomy to initiate force, which states may begin to view as necessary to protect against hypersonic attacks and other forms of 'hyperwar,' may effectively constitute a delegation of war-initiation decision making to a machine. Yet legal questions about whether and when the leader of a country may delegate their decision making to others – and normative questions about whether he should do so – can be complicated. Any state that intends to introduce significant autonomy into such sys…
2025-02-03 · 6 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This book addresses a pressing challenge posed by artificial intelligence: its use may weaken democratic accountability for consequential U.S. national security choices, including war. To ensure that those choices adhere to the public law values of rationality, legality, and accountability, we rely on Congress and the courts, as well as foreign allies, whistleblowers, and even U.S. technology companies. But their work is hindered by the classified, “black box” nature of the Executive’s…
Defend Forward and Cyber Countermeasures
2022-03-24 · 3 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract When a state suffers an internationally wrongful act at the hands of another state, international law allows the injured state to respond in a variety of ways. Depending on the nature, scope, and severity of the initial wrongful act, lawful responses can range from a demand for reparations in response to a low-level violation to a forcible act of self-defense in response to an armed attack. Countermeasures offer an additional way for a state to respond to an internationally wrongful act…
Coding the Law of Armed Conflict
2022-08-11 · 3 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Machine learning algorithms hold out the promise of making sense of vast quantities of information, detecting patterns, and identifying anomalies better than humans. It seems safe to predict that by 2040 militaries will rely heavily on predictive algorithms, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in many aspects of warfighting. Military operators, programmers, and lawyers will confront difficult challenges as they try to create decision-support algorithms that are sensitive to in…
Frequent coauthors
- 2 shared
Noam Lubell
- 2 shared
Andrew T. Hayashi
University of Virginia
- 2 shared
Daragh Murray
Queen Mary University of London
- 1 shared
Benjamin Wittes
- 1 shared
Oren Gross
University of Minnesota
- 1 shared
Patrick Toomey
- 1 shared
Matthew J. Burton
- 1 shared
Gregory S. McNeal
Pepperdine University
Education
Other
University of Virginia School of Law
M.A., Academic Fellow
Columbia Law School
Awards & honors
- 2007-08 Council on Foreign Relations international affairs f…
- Fellow of the American Law Institute
- Member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Inter…
- Faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center
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