Steve Vladeck

Stephen Isaiah Vladeck (born September 26, 1979) is the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law, where he specializes in national security law, especially with relation to the prosecution of war crimes.

Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture, and is a regular contributor to CNN.

Vladeck, the son of Fredda Wellin Vladeck and Bruce C. Vladeck (administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration from 1993 to 1997, now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), was born and raised in New York City before moving to Silver Spring, Maryland with his family when his father became administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration in 1993.

He is the grandson of Judith Vladeck, a labor lawyer who won major sex and age discrimination cases.

He is the nephew of Georgetown University Law Center professor, and former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission David Vladeck.

Vladeck was a two-sport athlete at Montgomery Blair High School, and he was active in the athletics department at Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a double major in mathematics and history.

His J.D. degree is from Yale Law School, where he was the executive director of the Yale Law Journal and was the student director of the balancing civil liberties & national security post-9/11 litigation project.

He was also awarded the Potter Stewart prize and Harlan Fiske Stone prize.

In 2005, Vladeck joined the law faculty at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida.

In 2007, he joined the faculty at the Washington College of Law at American University.

Vladeck clerked for Marsha Berzon and Rosemary Barkett — judges on the 9th and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

He worked on the legal team managed by Neal K. Katyal that successfully challenged the constitutionality of George W. Bush's Guantanamo Military Commissions.

In 2011, Vladeck married Karen Shafrir, the managing director of Whisler Partners, a law firm for startup technology companies.

Vladeck co-hosts the National Security Law Podcast with fellow University of Texas law professor Robert Chesney.

In 2016, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law.

Vladeck is a founding member of Lawfare; an executive editor, prior co-editor-in-chief and contributor at Just Security; and a contributor at PrawfsBlawg.

In 2020, Vladeck began hosting a second podcast, In Loco Parent(i)s with his wife, Karen Shafrir-Vladeck.

The podcast is “about parenting and lawyering, in that order.” He also publishes a Substack newsletter, titled One First.