Prof. Dakota S. Rudesill is Associate Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law and Simulation Director for the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University.
Prof. Rudesill’s scholarship and teaching focus on three overlapping areas: U.S. national security law and policy (especially use of force domestically and internationally, secrecy, intelligence, and nuclear weapons); legislative bodies and the legislation they produce; and the ethical responsibilities of professionals. His scholarship has appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, Journal of National Security Law and Policy, Yale Journal of International Law, Harvard National Security Journal, and Stanford Journal of International Law, among other publications. His writing has also appeared in Lawfare, Just Security, The New York Times, The Hill, and other popular publications.
He is regularly interviewed or quoted by print, cable, radio, and online media, including the BBC, France24, NBC, NewsNation, Politico, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications in the United States and worldwide. Prof. Rudesill is past Chair of the National Security Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS). In 2019, he was the first legal scholar awarded the Sidney D. Drell Academic Achievement Award, for scholarship and teaching regarding intelligence.
Prof. Rudesill is one of relatively few U.S. legal scholars who has served in all three branches of the federal government, and one of the small handful who have served inside an intelligence agency. He has advised senior leaders at the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition’s Intelligence Team, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Before joining Ohio State’s faculty, Prof. Rudesill was a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Earlier in his career, he was selected for the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, and was an associate at the law firm of Covington & Burling and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), both in Washington, D.C.
Prof. Rudesill received his B.A. degree from St. Olaf College, and his J.D. degree from Yale Law School.
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