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Award-Winning National Security Law Scholarship

February 02, 2023

Prof. Jean Galbraith’s article, “The Runaway Presidential Power Over Diplomacy” has been awarded the Mike Lewis Prize.

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Professor of Law Jean Galbraith was recently awarded the Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article, “The Runaway Presidential Power Over Diplomacy,” which was published in the Virginia Law Review.

The prize was established by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin and Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law (ONU), in consultation with the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on National Security Law and honors Professor Mike Lewis of ONU, a much-loved colleague and prolific scholar who passed away in 2015. Each year, the Mike Lewis Prize — in the amount of $1,000 — is awarded to the author of an outstanding national security law article.

Galbraith is a scholar of public international law and U.S. foreign relations law. She has published extensively on the separation of U.S. foreign affairs powers and on the design of international treaty regimes. In 2017 and again in 2020, she received the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence, which is awarded by vote of the graduating 3L class.

Galbraith’s pathbreaking article was featured in Advances in Research, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s annual premier publication that highlights outstanding faculty research and scholarship.

From Advances in Research:

Especially in recent years, presidents have claimed an “exclusive” power over diplomacy as a justification for ignoring important congressional statutes — statutes that structure diplomatic engagement, ban appropriations for forms of international engagement, or require executive branch disclosure of diplomacy-related information. Although largely overlooked by scholars up to this point, these claims have led to a significant expansion of presidential power. Galbraith analyzes and critiques these claims, arguing for a more modest understanding of presidential power over diplomacy… .