Captain Jacob W. Romelhardt
Captain Jacob W. Romelhardt—a native of Saint Joseph, Michigan—earned his Master or Laws (LLM) at Harvard Law School in 2014, his Jurist Doctor (JD), summa cum laude, at Boston University School of Law in 2005, and his Bachelor of Arts (BA) in psychology at Northwestern University in 2001. He earned admittance to the California Bar in 2005.
Captain Romelhardt has been the Director of OJAG Code 10 in Washington, DC since September 2024. Prior national security law assignments include: Legal and Oceans Policy Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Operations, Plans, Strategy, and Warfighting Development (OPNAV N3N5N7L) at the Pentagon; Chief Counsel for National Security Law at U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Mr. Mitt Regan
Mitt Regan is McDevitt Professor of Jurisprudence and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center.  He also Adjunct Faculty Member at the Center for Military and Security Law at the Australian National University College of Law, and an International Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Professional Service Firms. His work focuses on organizational, cultural, and psychological aspects of ethical issues in business, law practice, and the national security and military settings.  He is the author of Eat What You Kill: The Fall of a Wall Street Lawyer, and co-author of Confidence Games: Lawyers, Accountants, and the Tax Shelter Industry and Legal Ethics in Corporate Practice.  Professor Regan served as law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. on the U.S. Supreme Court and then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Dr. Stephen Neff
Dr. Stephen Neff is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh.  His primary research interests are the history of public international law.  He is the author of Justice among Nations: A History of International Law and War and the Law of Nations: A General History.  His current research focuses on the history of the law of neutrality and on international human rights law. 

Dr. Laurie R. Blank
Laurie R. Blank is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law, where she teaches the law of armed conflict and works directly with students to provide assistance to international tribunals, non-governmental organizations and militaries around the world on cutting edge issues in humanitarian law and human rights. During the 2022-2024 academic years, she served as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense. Professor Blank’s latest book is International Conflict and Security Law and she is co-author of International Law and Armed Conflict: Fundamental Principles and Contemporary Challenges in the Law of War, a casebook on the law of war.

Mr. Karl Chang
Karl Chang is an Associate General Counsel (International Affairs) in the Department of Defense, Office of General Counsel. Since 2006, he has worked as a lawyer at the Department of Defense on a variety of national security and international law issues, including in the areas of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, jus ad bellum, and international law on the exercise of jurisdiction and immunities. He has advised on U.S. Government policies (e.g., on reducing civilian casualties, U.S. policy towards the International Criminal Court), DoD policies (e.g., on the use of autonomy in weapon systems, detention operations, Artificial Intelligence), and litigation against DoD officials involving issues of international law.

Dr. Helen Frowe
DI'm Professor of Practical Philosophy and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar at Stockholm University, where I direct the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. I work on moral and political philosophy. I am Honorary Chair of the Society for Applied Philosophy. My research explores a range of topics in normative and applied ethics. I’m especially interested in deontological principles, such the distinction between doing and allowing harm and the moral significance of using a person for the benefit of others. Much of my work explores how these principles interact with other morally salient considerations, such as responsibility, causation, consent, and authority. I have published extensively on theoretical issues connected to permissible harming, our duties to aid, the ways in which we can be connected to the wrongdoing of others, and the normative significance of heritage. My work on the ethics of war and self-defense has been published in Ethics, Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, Criminal Law and Philosophy, Journal of Moral Philosophy, as two monographs (Defensive Killing, Oxford University Press; The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction, Routledge) and in numerous edited collections. I am also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War and How We Fight: Ethics in War.

Dr. Adil Haque 

Professor Haque's scholarship focuses on the international law of armed conflict and the philosophy of international law. His first book, Law and Morality at War, was the subject of a symposium in Ethics, a review essay in the European Journal of International Law, and several reviews in leading journals. His work has been cited by the European Court of Human Rights and by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions in her report on the use of armed drones for targeted killing. Professor Haque is frequently quoted by the media on questions of international law, including by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Economist, and CNN.

 
Dr. Yvonne Chiu

Yvonne Chiu is an associate professor of strategy & policy in the NWC at NPS resident program (Monterey), and formerly in the Strategy & Policy Department (Newport). She writes on just war theory, international ethics, and authoritarianism. Her book, Conspiring with the Enemy: The Ethic of Cooperation in Warfare, won the International Studies Association–International Ethics Section Book Award 2021 and the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award 2019. She has been a national fellow at Hoover Institution, a member of Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), a professor at University of Hong Kong, and a postdoctoral fellow at Political Theory Project (Brown University).

Dr. David Lefkowitz 
Dr. David Lefkowitz specializes in legal and political philosophy.  Among the courses he teaches on a semi-regular basis are Philosophy of Law, a First Year Seminar on Philosophy and the Criminal Law, and for the PPEL Program, a Capstone Seminar on the Ethics, Economics, and Politics of New Information and Communication Technologies. Dr. Lefkowitz’s research interests span three overlapping areas: (1) the morality of obedience and disobedience to law (e.g., the basis, if any, of a moral duty to obey the law, the moral justifiability of civil disobedience, and the just treatment of conscientious objectors); (2) analytical and normative issues in international law (e.g., the legitimacy of international law, the existence (or not) of an international rule of law, and the nature of customary international law); and (3) substantive moral questions in the conduct of international affairs (e.g. the morality of secession, and the just conduct of war).  Dr. Lefkowitz is the author of Philosophy and International Law: A Critical Introduction (2020), as well as more than forty journal articles and book chapters. 

 Dr. Janina Dill
Janina Dill is a Professor of Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government of the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow at Trinity College and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Her research concerns the role of law and morality in international relations, specifically in war. In one strand of research, she develops legal and philosophical theories about how international law can be an instrument of morality in war, albeit an imperfect one. This work speaks to debates in just war theory and international law. Another strand of her research seeks to explain how moral and legal norms affect the reality of war. She contributes to debates about the capacity of international law to constrain military decision-making. She also studies how normative considerations can shape public opinion on the use of force and the attitudes of conflict-affected populations, for instance, in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Iraq.

Dr. Steve Fetter 
Steve Fetter has been a professor in the School of Public Policy since 1988, serving as dean from 2005 to 2009. He also has served as associate provost and dean of the Graduate School and as associate provost for academic affairs. Fetter is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control and has served on Academy committees to assess U.S. nuclear weapon policy, effects of nuclear earth-penetrating warheads, monitoring nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, internationalization of the nuclear fuel cycle, conventional prompt global strike, geoengineering, ballistic missile defense, nuclear forensics, and nuclear terrorism. He is also a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists board of directors, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board, and the board of editors of Science and Global Security. 

Dr. Claire Finkelstein
She is the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy. Finkelstein’s current research addresses national security law and policy, democratic governance, and professional ethics.
Finkelstein is the founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), a non-partisan interdisciplinary institute affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC). She is a distinguished research fellow at APPC and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). An expert in the law of armed conflict, military ethics, national security law, and professional ethics, she is a co-editor (with Jens David Ohlin) of The Oxford Series in Ethics, National Security, and the Rule of Law, and an editor of six of its volumes: Targeted Killings: Law & Morality in an Asymmetrical World (2012); Cyber War: Law and Ethics for Virtual Conflicts (2015); Weighing Lives in War (2017); Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority (2018); Preserving Cultural Heritage in Times of War (2022), and Between Crime and War: Hybrid Legal Frameworks for Asymmetric Conflict.

Dr. Michael Walzer
Professor, author, editor, and lecturer, Michael Walzer has addressed a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy: political obligation, just and unjust war, nationalism and ethnicity, economic justice and the welfare state. His books (among them Just and Unjust Wars, Spheres of Justice, The Company of Critics, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, On Toleration, and Politics and Passion) and essays have played a part in the revival of practical, issue-focused ethics and in the development of a pluralist approach to political and moral life. For more than three decades Walzer served as co-editor of Dissent, now in its 64th year. His articles and interviews appear frequently in the world’s foremost newspapers and journals. He is currently working on the fourth volume of The Jewish Political Tradition, a comprehensive collaborative project focused on the history of Jewish political thought. His book, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions, was published in March of 2015. A Foreign Policy for the Left, was published in 2018.

 Major General David J. Bligh
Major General Bligh was raised in Athens, Pennsylvania.  He is a 1988 graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a 1997 graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law. Major General Bligh was commissioned through the Platoon Leaders Course program in 1988.  He initially served as a Platoon Commander and Company Commander at 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  He later served as a Series Commander at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina. Upon completion of the Naval Justice School, Major General Bligh served as a civil law officer, trial counsel, and officer-in-charge of legal assistance at Camp Lejeune.  He was then assigned as Director, Joint Law Center, Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina. During this assignment, Major General Bligh deployed for OIF-I with Task Force Tarawa. Major General Bligh has served as the Staff Judge Advocate for 3rd Marine Division and III Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa, Japan, and Marine Corps Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.  Prior to assuming his current duties, Major General Bligh served as the Deputy Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and later as the Assistant Judge Advocate General of the Navy (Military Law).

 Dr. Brenner M. Fissell 
Brenner M. Fissell is professor of law (with tenure) at Villanova Law. For the 2024-2025 academic year, he is also the Class of 1964 fellow at the United States Naval Academy's Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, as well as the chair of faculty appointments at Villanova Law. He is the law school's representation on the University Faculty Congress Executive Committee. Fissell's research focuses on substantive criminal law, especially as it relates to the criminal law of local governments and the misdemeanor criminal legal system. A secondary research interest is military law. Fissell's scholarship has appeared in general law reviews such as the Vanderbilt Law Review and the Minnesota Law Review, as well as peer-reviewed journals such as Legal Theory. Fissell is co-convener of the NYC Criminal Law Colloquium (the Markelloquium!).

Dr. Michael Skerker
Michael Skerker is a Professor in the Leadership, Ethics, and Law Department who focuses on police, military, and intelligence ethics. He is the author of The Moral Status of Combatants (Routledge, 2020) and An Ethics of Interrogation (Chicago, 2010) and co-editor of Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority (Oxford, 2017), Military Virtue (Howgate, 2019), and Cyber Warfare Ethics (Howgate, 2021). Recent articles have addressed the ethics of customer selection, the ethics of military influence operations, and proportionality in warfighting. Prof. Skerker has consulted with and created ethics training materials for Naval Special Warfare, the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, US law enforcement, and Fortune 500 companies.

Dr. David Luban
David Luban is University Professor and Professor of Law and Philosophy. In addition to his Georgetown responsibilities, he is Class of 1965 Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, United States Naval Academy (2013-15).  In 2012-13 he co-directed the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London.  Luban has also directed Georgetown's Center on National Security and Law. Luban is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and has received prizes for distinguished scholarship from the American Bar Foundation and the New York State Bar Association.  In 2011 he was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University.