Laura A. Dickinson

“Military Lawyers, Private Contractors, and the Problem of International Law Compliance,” by Foundation Professor of Law Laura A. Dickinson, was published in the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics.

Using empirical interviews with military lawyers, Dickinson argues that certain organizational features of the lawyers’ role in the military help further the military’s compliance with international legal norms. Yet, she writes, private security firms lack most of those organizational features, making it far less likely that such firms will comply with the norms. Dickinson suggests some of these organizational structures be imported into the new privatized context.

To read the full article, click here.

Dickinson joined the law faculty in 2008 as a professor and the faculty director of the Center for Law and Global Affairs. Her work focuses on human rights, national security, foreign affairs privatization, and qualitative empirical approaches to international law. Dickinson’s current work-in-progress is a monograph entitled, Outsourcing War and Peace, to be published by Yale University Press. The book examines the increasing privatization of military, security, and foreign aid functions of government, considers the impact of this trend on core public values, and outlines mechanism for protecting these values in an era of privatization.