Rebecca Crootof
Rebecca Crootof (Bluesky, LinkedIn) is the Nancy Litchfield Hicks Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and an Affiliated Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. In 2024, she served as the inaugural Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications (ELSI) Visiting Scholar at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Along with BJ Ard, she is publishing an open access Technology Law coursebook.
Dr. Crootof is interested in the ways legal regimes respond to and shape technological development, particularly in the armed conflict and national security contexts. Much of her writing argues for using law to mitigate tech-fostered harms, with a focus on minimizing civilian harms in armed conflict. Her primary areas of research include technology law, international law, national security, and torts; her written work explores questions stemming from the iterative relationship between law and technology, often in light of social changes sparked by increasingly autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, cyberoperations, robotics, and the Internet of Things.
Dr. Crootof earned a B.A. cum laude in English with a minor in Mathematics at Pomona College; a J.D. at Yale Law School; and a PhD at Yale Law School, where she graduated as a member of the first class of PhDs in law awarded in the United States. Her full bio is available at https://www.crootof.com/.
