Stephanie K. Pell

Stephanie Pell is a fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and a senior editor at Lawfare. Prior to joining Brookings, she was an associate professor (with tenure) and cyber ethics fellow at West Point’s Army Cyber Institute, with a joint appointment to the Department of English and Philosophy, where she designed and taught West Point’s first cyber ethics course. Her scholarly work focuses on privacy and reproductive justice, surveillance, cyber ethics, cybersecurity law and policy, cyberwarfare and conflict, and the impact of technology upon racial equity. Stephanie’s work has been published in several law journals, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and the Connecticut Law Review, as well as in the popular national magazine Wired.

Prior to joining West Point’s faculty, Stephanie served as a majority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and lead counsel on both Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) reform and PATRIOT Act reauthorization during the 111th Congress. She was also a federal prosecutor for over 14 years, working as a senior counsel to the deputy attorney general, as a counsel to the assistant attorney general of the National Security Division, and as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Pell was a lead prosecutor in U.S. v. Jose Padilla (American citizen detained as an enemy combatant prior to criminal indictment, trial, and conviction on various terrorism charges), for which she received the U.S. Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award, and in U.S. v. Conor Claxton (IRA operatives who purchased weapons in South Florida and smuggled them into Belfast, Northern Ireland, during peace process negotiations).