Laura A. Dickinson

Last updated

Laura A. Dickinson
NationalityAmerican
Education Harvard University (AB)
Yale Law School (JD)
OccupationLaw professor
Known forExpert on private security forces law

Laura Anne Dickinson is the Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law at George Washington University School of Law. [1] She is the author of the 2011 book Outsourcing War and Peace, which discusses the current trend in the United States towards privatization of the military.

Contents

Career

Dickinson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and completed her juris doctor at Yale Law School in 1996. [1] After graduation, she clerked for Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 2001 to 2008, Dickinson was a member of the faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Law. [2] She moved to Arizona State University in 2008, where she served as director of the Center for Law and Global Affairs at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law until 2011. [2] She was also visiting research scholar and visiting professor in the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University in 2006–2007. [2]

In 2008, Dickinson testified before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on the subject of "private security firms operating in war zones" where she noted that "The use of private security contractors and interrogators poses special risks and potentially threatens core values embodied in our legal system including respect for human dignity and limits on the use of force as well as a commitment to transparency and accountability." [3]

Dickinson has served in government, first as senior policy advisor in the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and later as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense. She is currently a Francis Lieber Scholar at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Research and publications

She has written about for-profit and non-profit private involvement with various aspects of the US foreign aid budget, including providing emergency humanitarian relief, development assistance, as well as post-conflict reconstruction efforts. Her work also discusses the phenomenon of private entities that have started to perform tasks she describes as "core military functions". [4]

Dickinson is author of the book Outsourcing War and Peace (2011). The book acknowledges that privatization of the military is "likely to be a fact of life for twenty-first century military activity". She notes that a process that began during William Cohen 's tenure as Secretary of Defense was significantly expanded under Donald Rumsfeld and his successor Robert Gates. In a review published by The American Journal of International Law Scott Horton wrote that the book "stands alone as the first serious engagement" of the private security contractor industry at the "level of law and legal policy". [5] Stephanie Gosnell Handel, a former Marine officer, writes that Dickinson focuses on "developing a legal, regulatory, and institutional framework to respond to the threat outsourcing poses to public values." [6] Writing in Leiden Journal of International Law, Rain Liivoja notes that the book explains "how the formal legal rules—whether national or international—should not be seen as a panacea and how there are other mechanisms for ensuring respect for human dignity, transparency, and public participation—the public values that are the book's main concern." [7] Law professor Elena Baylis writes that Outsourcing War and Peace is an "engaging book" that "examines a variety of means of potentially holding contractors accountable including retroactive criminal and tort remedies, as well as proactive measures such as changes to contracting terms and practices, steps to increase public participation, and changes to organizational structure within contracting companies." [8]

Personal life

In June 2000 Dickinson married Paul Schiff Berman, a professor at The George Washington University Law School. The ceremony was officiated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—Berman had previously been one of Ginsburg's law clerks. Berman and Dickinson met while Dickinson was clerking for Justice Harry A. Blackmun and Justice Stephen G. Breyer. [1]

Awards

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Private military company</span> Company providing armed combat or security services

A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military contractors".

Morton H. Halperin is an American analyst who deals with U.S. foreign policy, arms control, civil liberties, and the workings of bureaucracies.

Raelynn J. Hillhouse is an American national security and Intelligence community analyst, former smuggler during the Cold War, spy novelist and health care executive.

John Howard Jackson was an American legal scholar and educator, expert in international trade law.

Paul Schiff Berman is an American lawyer and the Walter S. Cox Professor of Law at The George Washington University School of Law. He has held several other positions at the University including Vice Provost for Online Education and Academic Innovation and Dean of the School of Law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Chesterman</span> Australian legal academic

Simon Chesterman is an Australian legal academic and writer who is currently a vice provost at the National University of Singapore and dean of the NUS College. He was the dean of NUS Faculty of Law from 2012 to 2022. He is also senior director of AI governance at AI Singapore, editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and co-president of the Law Schools Global League.

Privatization is the process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency, charity or public service from the public sector or common use to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations. In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector - including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Full spectrum diplomacy</span>

Full spectrum diplomacy is a combination of traditional, government-to-government diplomacy with the many components of public diplomacy as well as the integration of these two functions with other instruments of statecraft. The term was coined by John Lenczowski, founder and president of The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. in his book Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy: Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy which was released in May, 2011.

The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies (SIWPS) is a research center that is part of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York. It was founded in 1951 by President of Columbia Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Institute of War and Peace Studies (IWPS) and was led for its first 25 years by Professor William T. R. Fox. It was given its current name in 2003. By its own description, the institute's researchers analyze "the political, military, historical, legal, economic, moral, psychological, and philosophical dimensions of international relations."

Peter John Spiro is an American legal scholar whose specialities include international law and U.S. constitutional law. He is a leading expert on dual citizenship. Formerly the Rusk Professor of International Law at the University of Georgia, since 2006 he has been the Charles R. Weiner Professor of Law at Temple University.

Oona Anne Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, 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. 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. 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.

Margee M. Ensign is the President of the American University in Bulgaria.

Mary Ellen O'Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and a research professor of international dispute resolution at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace in Studies. Since joining the Notre Dame Law School in 2005, she has taught the courses International Law, International Law and the Use of Force, International Dispute Resolution, International Environmental Law, International Art Law, and Contracts. Prior to joining Notre Dame's faculty, she taught at Ohio State University (1999–2005), as the William B. Saxbe Designated Professor of Law in the Moritz College of Law and was a senior fellow of the Mershon Center for the Study of International Security and Public Policy. She was also a visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law (1998–1999).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lise Morjé Howard</span> Political scientist

Lise Morjé Howard is a political scientist from the United States (U.S.), an expert on United Nations peacekeeping, war termination, civil wars, and American foreign policy. She is currently a Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and President of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS).

Nancy Amoury Combs is an American legal scholar known for her work on international criminal law. She is Ernest W. Goodrich Professor of Law and director of the Human Security Law Center and Cabell Research Professor at the William & Mary Law School.

Mark A. Drumbl is a scholar of international law and Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Geiss</span> German international law scholar (born 1974)

Robin Geiss is a German academic specializing in public international law. In 2021, he was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Prior to this, Geiss held various academic appointments including as Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Director of the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security at the University of Glasgow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anupam Chander</span> American academic

Anupam Chander is the Scott K Ginsburg Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on the global regulation of new technologies. Chander's scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the California Law Review, and the American Journal of International Law, among other legal publications, and his research has been featured in news stories by Business Insider, CNN, NPR, and Forbes.

David S. Weissbrodt was an American legal scholar. He was Regents Professor Emeritus and Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Law School.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Laura Dickinson, Paul Berman". New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast); New York, N.Y. New York, N.Y., United States, New York, N.Y. June 4, 2000. p. 9. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 17, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 "Laura Dickinson (Faculty Profile) Program in Law and Public Affairs". Princeton University. Archived from the original on October 24, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
  3. ↑ "Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman Holds a Hearing on Private Security Firms Operating in War Zones". Political Transcript Wire; Lanham. Lanham, United States, Lanham. February 29, 2008. Archived from the original on July 14, 2018. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
  4. ↑ Dickinson, Laura A (2005). "Government For Hire: Privatizing Foreign Affairs and the Problem of Accountability Under International Law". William and Mary Law Review. 47: 104. Archived from the original on July 13, 2018.
  5. ↑ Scott Horton (2012). "Review". The American Journal of International Law. 106 (2): 431–437. doi:10.5305/amerjintelaw.106.2.0431. ISSN   0002-9300. JSTOR   10.5305/amerjintelaw.106.2.0431. S2CID   141002113.
  6. ↑ Handler, Slephenie Gosnell (2011). "Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs". Stanford Journal of International Law. 47 (2): 451–456. ISSN   0731-5082. Archived from the original on July 15, 2018. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
  7. ↑ Liivoja, Rain (2012). "Regulating the Private Military and Security Industry: A Quest to Maintain State Control and Preserve Public Values". Leiden Journal of International Law. 25 (4): 1019–1028. doi:10.1017/S0922156512000568. ISSN   0922-1565. S2CID   145661719.
  8. ↑ Baylis, Elena (2012). "Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs". Journal of International Law & International Relations. Retrieved July 13, 2018– via Gale group.
  9. ↑ "Professor Dickinson Receives Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service". The George Washington University Law School. October 31, 2017. Archived from the original on July 14, 2018. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.