Matthew C. Waxman

Matthew C. Waxman is the Liviu Librescu Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he directs the National Security Law Program. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Waxman previously served in senior positions during the George W. Bush administration at the U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and National Security Council. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and he studied military history and strategy as a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom. After law school, he served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Joel M. Flaum. Earlier in his career he worked as an analyst at RAND.

Waxman’s first book, with Daniel Byman, was The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge University Press, 2002). His forthcoming book is Constitutional War Powers: Law & Strategy from the Revolution to Cyberconflict (Cambridge University Press, expected 2026). He published numerous monographs at RAND, and his many articles have appeared in International Security, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, and the European Journal of International Law.