Rachel E. VanLandingham

Rachel E. VanLandingham, Lt Col. (ret.), is a national security law expert and former active duty judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force (USAF) who was appointed to the Southwestern Law School full-time faculty in Fall 2014 and awarded tenure as a full professor in 2018. In addition to her award-winning scholarship, Professor VanLandingham is a frequent media commentator sought after for her military law expertise. Her analysis has appeared in leading media including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and CNBC, and in other major outlets.  As both a scholar and president of the leading national non-profit dedicated to improving the military criminal justice system, Professor VanLandingham was instrumental in helping 2021’s passage of the most significant military justice legislative reform since the 1950s.

During Professor VanLandingham's military career, she served as a senior legal advisor on the international law of armed conflict, military prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, appellate defense attorney, and nuclear surety inspector, stationed around the globe with deployments to the Middle East. She was the chief legal advisor for international law at Headquarters, U.S. Central Command, where she advised on operational and international legal issues related to the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the Command's Chief Liaison to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), she worked to  improve procedural safeguards and humane treatment standards for detainees in U.S. custody. At U.S. Central Command, Professor VanLandingham was also detailed to interagency collaborations with the Department of Justice, Department of State, and other federal agencies regarding treaty development and detainee habeas litigation.

Immediately prior to coming to Southwestern, Professor VanLandingham was the Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Assistant Professor at Stetson University College of Law, where she taught international law and criminal procedure from 2012 to 2014. Before joining the Stetson faculty, she was the Deputy Department Head of the Department of Law and Assistant Professor of Law at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, (her alma mater) where she managed a legal department of 19 professors and taught both international law and military law courses. 

Her recent media appearances include analysis in the New York Times regarding Ukraine’s lack of investigations of war crimes allegations, and essays such as this The Hill piece regarding the Air Force’s decision to court-martial an airman recently convicted in federal court of espionage charges.

Professor VanLandingham is a frequent commentator in the national media particularly regarding military justice and law of war issues.Her recent media appearances include analysis in the New York Times regarding Ukraine’s lack of investigations of war crimes allegations, and essays such as this The Hill piece regarding the Air Force’s decision to court-martial an airman recently convicted in federal court of espionage charges.

She has also provided expert advice to policymakers on issues related to sexual assault in the military, reforms to military penal code, as well as regarding international humanitarian law. For example, in 2013, she testified before the Response Systems to Adult Sexual Assault Crimes Panel, a congressionally-mandated body chartered to examine sexual assault in the U.S. military, and did the same in 2014 before a similarly-constituted Judicial Proceedings Panel. In September 2016 she commented on law of war matters at a briefing organized by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She has published Op Eds in the Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill, Politico, Just Security, Lawfare, and other media, and has been interviewed on outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Democracy Now, and BBC.

Professor VanLandingham's award-winning scholarship explores the procedural and normative elements of decision-making and the development of norms in national security law, military criminal law and international law. In 2015 she won the second edition of the Benjamin B. Ferencz Essay Competition, hosted by the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, for her article, “Criminally Disproportionate Warfare:  Aggression as a Contextual War Crime” for which she received a $10,000 prize and publication of her work.

Her work has appeared in the Ohio State Law Journal,  Cardozo Law Review, American University Law Review, Kentucky Law Journal, Tulane Law Review, Syracuse Law Review, Pepperdine Law Review, Texas Tech Law Review, Hofstra Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Case Western Journal of International Law,  the Southwestern Law Review, the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy and the Valparaiso University Law Review. She is the co-author of the 2015 Oxford University Press book, U.S. Military Operations: Law, Policy and Practice along with Professors Geoffrey Corn and Shane Reeves.

A 1992 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, where she earned her B.S. in Political Science, Professor VanLandingham completed her Master of Public Management, emphasis in national security, from the University of Maryland, College Park as a MacArthur Scholar in 1994. She received her J.D. with high honors in 2000 from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was inducted into the Chancellor's Society, and her LL.M. in Military Law (International and Operational Law Specialty) in 2006 from the Judge Advocate General's School, where she was named to the Commandant's List. 

Professor VanLandingham is proudly married to Hermosa Beach City Councilman Ray Jackson, Colonel, U.S. Army (ret.), and is the mother of two incredible boys, Vann and Jax Jackson (Jax is a Type 1 Diabetes warrior).

President Emerita of the National Institute of Military Justice (current Director)

Chair (emerita and 2025) of the Association of American Law Schools' Section on National Security Law

Secretary of American Society of International Law’s Lieber Society

Award-Winning Scholar, Benjamin B. Ferencz Essay Competition, hosted by the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center

Chief, International Law, U.S. Central Command

Deputy Department Head of the Department of Law & Assistant Professor of Law, U.S. Air Force Academy

Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Assistant Professor, Stetson University College of Law