Oona A. Hathaway

Oona Anne Hathaway (born 1972) is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School^[1], Professor of the Yale University Department of Political Science, Professor at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, and Director of the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace^[2]. She has been a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the United States Department of State since 2005. In 2014-15, she took leave to serve as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence^[3]. She is the Director of the annual Yale Cyber Leadership Forum and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  She is also Executive Editor of and regular author at Just Security, and she writes often for popular publications such as The Washington Post, New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. She is one of the most highly cited international law scholars in the United States, and she regularly appears as a public commentator on issues of international law, national security law, foreign relations law, and constitutional law.

Hathaway was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. While in high school, she participated in the We the People and Mock Trial programs as a student at Lincoln High School, where she was also student body president.^[4]

She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1994; She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a John Harvard Scholar, and on the Dean’s List. Furthermore, at Harvard, she received the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize, the Gerda Richards Crosby Prize, and the Elizabeth Agaziz Award. Hathaway received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1997, where she was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal,^[5][6] the managing/articles editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, and participant in the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic.

After law school graduation, Hathaway clerked for D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Wald and, during the 1998 Term, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court. Following her clerkships, Hathaway held fellowships at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Center for the Ethics and the Professions.^[7][8] She was an associate professor at Boston University School of Law and served as Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law.^[9][10][11] In 2014–15, Hathaway took leave from teaching at Yale Law School to serve as the Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense, a position for which she received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence.

Hathaway is currently the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Professor of the Yale University Department of Political Science, Professor at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, and Director of the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges, an Executive Editor at Just Security, and a nonresident scholar in the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. ^[12][13]

From 2009 to 2013, 2010 to 2014, 2013 to 2017, and 2016 to 2020, the last period in which a study was done, Hathaway was one of the ten most cited international law scholars.^{[14][15][16][17]} She was both the only woman in the top 10 and also youngest person on both lists. She is also among the top 10 most cited legal scholars in any field born in 1970 or after.^[18] Her book with Scott J. Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, received wide acclaim by The New Yorker,^[19] The Financial Times,^[20] and The Economist,^[21] among others. She has published widely and been quoted in the media as an expert on international law, national security law, the law of war, foreign relations law, and constitutional law.^{[22][23][24][25][26]} Recently, she has been a prominent commentator on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Hathaway is married to Jacob S. Hacker, professor of political science at Yale University. They have two children.^[27]

• The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (with Scott Shapiro) (2017, Simon & Shuster)
  • Editions: U.K. Edition (Penguin Allen Lane) published September 2017; Japanese Edition published 12 October 2018; Italian Edition published November 2018; Chinese Edition published in Fall 2021.
• Foundations of International Law and Politics (with Harold H. Koh) (Foundation Press 2004) (a reader intended for legal and political science audiences)

• Major Questions about International Agreements, University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2024) (with Kristen Eichensehr)
• The Rise of Nonbinding Agreements, 90 University of Chicago Law Review 1981 (2023) (with Curtis Bradley & Jack Goldsmith)
• The Transparency Crisis for Executive Agreements: An Empirical and Normative Analysis, 123 Harvard Law Review 629 (2020) (with Curtis Bradley & Jack Goldsmith)
• A Comparative Foreign Relations Law Agenda: Opportunities and Challenges, in Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law (Curtis Bradley, ed.,2019)
• Asking for Directions: The Case for Federal Courts To Use Certification Across Borders, Yale Law Journal Forum (November 2015) (with Michael Wishnie).
• The Treaty Power: Its History, Scope, and Limits, Cornell Law Review (2013) (w/ Spencer Amdur, Celia Choy, Samir Deger-Sen, Haley Nix, John Paredes & Sally Pei).
• International Law at Home, Yale Journal of International Law (2012) (with Sara Solow & Sabria McElroy).
• International Law at a Crossroads, Yale Journal of International Affairs (2012) (with Sara Solow & Sabria McElroy).
• Presidential Power over International Law: Restoring the Balance, 119 Yale Law Journal 140 (2009).
• Treaties’ End: The Past, Present and Future of International Lawmaking in the United States, 117 Yale Law Journal 1236 (2008).

• War Reparations: The Case for Countermeasures, Stanford Law Review (2024) (with Maggie Mills & Thomas Poston)
• Constraints on the Use of Force, 14 Harvard National Security Law Journal 336 (2023)
• Congressional Oversight Over Modern Warfare, 63 William & Mary Law Review 137 (2021) (with Tobias Kuehne, Randi Michel & Nicole Ng)
• National Security Lawyering, 68 UCLA Law Review 2 (2021)
• Yemen: Is the U.S. Breaking the Law?, Harvard National Security Review (2019) (with Srinath Kethireddy, Alyssa Yamamoto, and Aaron Haviland)
• What is a War Crime? Just Security (April 15, 2019) (with Paul Strauch, Beatrice Walton, and Zoe Weinberg)
• War Manifestos, 85 University of Chicago Law Review 1139 (2018) (with William Holste, Scott Shapiro, Jacqueline Van De Velde, and Lisa Wang Lachowicz)
• War Manifestos Database, Yale Law School (with William Holste, Scott Shapiro, Jacqueline Van De Velde, and Lisa Wang Lachowicz)
• Ensuring Responsibility: Common Article 1 and State Responsibility for Non-State Actors, 95 Texas Law Review 539 (2017) (with Emily Chertoff, Lara Domínguez, Zachary Manfredi and Peter Tzeng)
• Consent is Not Enough: Why States Must Respect the Intensity Threshold in Transnational Conflict, 165 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 11 (2016) (with Rebecca Crootof, Daniel Hessel, Julia Shu, and Sarah Weiner).
• Fighting the Last War: The United Nations Charter in the Age of the War on Terror, in The U.N. Charter (Joseph Lambert & Ian Shapiro, eds.) (2014).
• Consent-Based Humanitarian Intervention, 46 Cornell International Law Journal 499 (2013) (with Julia Brower, Ryan Liss, Tina Thomas, & Jacob Victor).
• The Power to Detain: Detention of Terrorism Suspects After 9/11, Yale Journal of International Law (2013) (with Samuel Adelsberg, Spencer Amdur, Philip Levitz, Freya Pitts, and Sirine Shebaya).
• The Law of Cyber-Attack, California Law Review (2012) (with Rebecca Crootof, Philip Levitz, Haley Nix, Aileen Nowlan, William Perdue, Julia Spiegel).
• The Relationship Between International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict, Minnesota Law Review (2012) (with Rebecca Crootof, Philip Levitz, Haley Nix, William Purdue, Chelsea Purvis, Julia Speigel).
• Limited War and the Constitution, Michigan Law Review (2011) (with Bruce Ackerman).

• Keeping the Wrong Secrets: How Washington Misses the Real Security Threat, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2022)
• Secrecy’s End, 106 Minnesota Law Review 691 (2021)

• A New Tool for Enforcing Human Rights: Erga Omnes Partes Standing, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (forthcoming 2024) (with Alaa Hachem & Justin Cole)
• Has the Alien Tort Statute Made a Difference? Transnational Litigation Blog (Aug. 1, 2022) (with Chris Ewell and Ellen Nohle)
• Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe I, Oral Argument 2.0 (December 2020)
• Alien Tort Statute, 2020-2021 ACS Supreme Court Review (October 27, 2021)
• Aiding and Abetting in International Law, 104 Cornell Law Review 1593 (2019) (with Srinath Kethireddy, Alexandra Francis, Alyssa Yamamoto & Aaron Haviland)
• Tortured Reasoning: The Intent to Torture Under International and Domestic Law, 52 Virginia Journal of International Law 791 (2012) (w/ Aileen Nowlan & Julia Spiegel).
• Why Do Nations Join Human Rights Treaties?, 51 Journal of Conflict Resolution 588 (2007)
• The International Law of Torture, in Torture: Philosophical, Political, and Legal Perspectives (Sanford Levinson ed., Oxford University Press 2004).
• Testing Conventional Wisdom, 13 European Journal of International Law 185 (2003)
• Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?, 111 Yale Law Journal 1935 (2002)

• International Law Scholarship: An Empirical Study, 49 Yale Journal of International Law 100 (2024) (with John D. Bowers)
• Myths and Realities of Global Governance, 45 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 31 (2022)
• The Covid-19 Pandemic and International Law, 53 Cornell International Law Journal 149 (2022) (with Preston J. Lim, Alasdair Phillips-Robins & Mark Stevens)
• Outcasting: Enforcement of Domestic and International Law, 121 Yale Law Journal 252 (2011) (with Scott Shapiro).
• The Case for Promoting Democracy Through Export Control, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 17 (2010).
• The Continuing Influence of the New Haven School, Yale Journal of International Law 553 (2007).
• Rationalism and Revisionism in International Law, 119 Harvard Law Review 1404 (2006) (with A. Lavinbuk).
• Between Power and Principle: An Integrated Theory of International Law, 72 University of Chicago Law Review 469 (2005)
• The New Empiricism in Human Rights: Insights and Implications, American Society of International Law Proceedings 206 (2004).
• The Cost of Commitment, 55 Stanford Law Review 1821 (2003).
• Positive Feedback: The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Industry Demands for Protection, 52 International Organization 575 (1998)

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 8)

• Center for Global Legal Challenges. Yale Law School.
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Social Science Research Network page