Rebecca Hamilton

Rebecca Hamilton (Bluesky – LinkedIn – X) is an Executive Editor of Just Security and Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law (WCL). Her research and teaching focus on national security law, international law, and criminal law, and the ways that technology and new media are influencing developments in these areas. Her scholarship draws on her experience prosecuting genocide and war crimes, as well as her work in conflict zones as a foreign correspondent. She is the author of Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan) which analyzes citizen activism and the effort to stop mass atrocities.

Hamilton previously served as a lawyer in the prosecutorial division of the International Criminal Court and has worked in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Before joining WCL, Hamilton was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was a Knox fellow, and she did her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, where she received the University Medal. Prior to entering academia Hamilton worked as a journalist for the Washington Post and Reuters. A Pulitzer Center grantee, a former fellow at New America and at Open Society Foundations, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she has also written for outlets including Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. She has appeared on PBS Newshour, NPR, BBC and CBS.