Kristen Eichensehr, an expert in foreign relations, national security, cybersecurity, and international law, joined the Harvard Law faculty as a professor of law on July 1. She served as the Samuel Williston Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School from 2024 to 2025.
“Kristen is an outstanding teacher and a true thought leader in the rapidly changing legal domain of national security and foreign relations,” said Harvard Law School Dean John C.P. Goldberg. “She brings to all her work a keen appreciation of the cross-cutting influences of many different institutions — sub-national, national, and international — on international law and international relations. Unsurprisingly, she is fully engaged with key stakeholders in her fields. Our colleagues and students will benefit enormously from her presence at HLS.”
Previously, Eichensehr was the David H. Ibbeken ’71 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she joined the faculty as a professor of law in 2020. She has also served as a faculty senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center and as director of UVA Law School’s National Security Law Center.
“I am delighted to join HLS’s vibrant intellectual community,” said Eichensehr. “The school’s students, faculty, and staff are deeply engaged with the law, and I look forward to learning with and from them.”
From 2014 to 2020, Eichensehr taught at UCLA School of Law, as a visiting assistant professor from 2014 to 2016, and as an assistant professor from 2016 to 2020.
Her recent scholarly articles include “Frictionless Government and Foreign Relations,” coauthored with University of Virginia Law Professor Ashley Deeks and published in the Virginia Law Review (2024), and “Major Questions about International Agreements,” coauthored with Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway and published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2024). In 2018, Eichensehr received the Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article “Courts, Congress, and the Conduct of Foreign Relations,” published in the University of Chicago Law Review.
In 2023, an essay she coauthored with University of Virginia Law Professor Cathy Hwang, “National Security Creep in Corporate Transactions,” was selected as one of the best corporate and securities articles by Corporate Practice Commentator and accepted to the 2022 Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Her latest work, “Federalism and the New National Security (forthcoming 2025),” with coauthor Professor Deeks is scheduled to be published in Harvard Law Review later this year.
Eichensehr is a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law. She is also an editorial board member for “Just Security” and “The Journal of National Security Law & Policy.” Prior to entering academia, Eichensehr clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor, and for then-Judge Merrick B. Garland ’77 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She also served as special assistant to the legal adviser of the State Department from 2009 to 2010.
As a practicing attorney from 2011 to 2014, Eichensehr worked at Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in appellate litigation and international and national security law, including advising clients on cybersecurity and international transactions.
Eichensehr graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University in 2004. She earned a Master of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Cambridge in 2005 and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2008.
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