Rebecca Crootof

Yale University, Richmond School and Sixth Form College

Papers

Total Citations

110

H-Index

About

Rebecca Crootof is a leading legal scholar whose research sits at the intersection of international law, emerging technologies, and warfare. Best known for her pioneering work on autonomous weapon systems — popularly termed "killer robots" — she has established herself as one of the foremost academic voices examining the profound legal and policy challenges posed by increasingly automated military technologies. Her landmark 2014 article, "The Killer Robots Are Here: Legal and Policy Implications," garnered 87 citations and arrived at a critical moment when international discussions around autonomous weapons were just beginning to crystallize, providing essential legal frameworks when the field desperately needed them. Crootof has further explored how traditional legal analogies struggle to accommodate genuinely novel technologies, and how autonomous weapons may fundamentally reshape constitutional distributions of war-making authority — a concern she develops in her 2015 work on war, responsibility, and killer robots. Her scholarship consistently bridges abstract legal theory and urgent real-world policy debates, making her work invaluable to policymakers, military ethicists, and legal practitioners alike. Students and researchers grappling with questions of accountability, sovereignty, and the future of armed conflict will find her contributions both foundational and indispensable.