Kristen Eichensehr

Kristen Eichensehr is the director of the National Security Law Center at the University of Virginia School of Law and a faculty senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center. Eichensehr writes and teaches about cybersecurity, foreign relations, national security and international law. Her recent work addresses national security screening of investments, separation of powers in the national security state, the attribution of state-sponsored cyberattacks and the interaction of the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine with U.S. international agreements.

Eichensehr is a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Forum on Cyber Resilience. She serves as an adviser on the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States and on the editorial boards of Just Security and the Journal of National Security Law & Policy. Eichensehr received the 2018 Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article “Courts, Congress, and the Conduct of Foreign Relations,” and her article on “National Security Creep in Corporate Transactions” (with Cathy Hwang) was selected as one of the best corporate and securities articles of 2023 by Corporate Practice Commentator.

Prior to entering academia, Eichensehr clerked for Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court of the United States and for then-Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She also served as special assistant to the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State and practiced at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.