Oona Hathaway

Background

About Oona Hathaway

Oona A. Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, Professor of Political Science at the Yale University Department of Political Science, Faculty at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, and Director of the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges. She is one of the most influential international law scholars in the United States.Oona is President of the American Society of International Law, the leading international law organization in the United States. She is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2011 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2025. In 2014-15, Oona took leave to serve as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the US Department of Defense, where she held TS/SCI clearance and was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence. She has been a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the US Department of State since 2005. Oona is a sought-after commentator on international law, foreign affairs, and national security. She is a founding Executive Editor of and regular author at Just Security, and she writes often for publications such as the New York Times and Foreign Affairs. She is currently working on a book, War Unbound, with the support of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and the Guggenheim Fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.