About us
People
NYU School of Law’s reputation in international law has been built on its superb faculty. The Program has been shaped over several decades by three of the major American scholars in the field, all of whom have recently argued cases in the International Court of Justice: Thomas Franck, an internationally renowned theorist and former president of the American Society of International Law; Andreas Lowenfeld, author of a series of influential books on international economic law and international litigation; and Theodor Meron, a preeminent figure in the law of war crimes and international criminal tribunals who is currently serving as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Some of the NYU international law faculty: (L-R) Professors Martti Koskenniemi (Global Faculty), Linda Silberman, Philip Alston, Eleanor Fox, Mattias Kumm, Andreas Lowenfeld, Stephen Holmes, Thomas Franck, Richard Stewart, Benedict Kingsbury, Joseph Weiler and Katrina Wyman.
Some of the leading scholars among the next generation in international law have recently joined the faculty. Philip Alston, one of the best-known scholars in international human rights law, chaired the U.N. Committee on Economic and Social Rights for eight years and is now U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, as well as Faculty Director of the new Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. David Golove, a prominent writer on constitutional aspects of U.S. foreign relations, teaches courses on international justice and is a faculty co-director of the Law School’s new Center on Law and Security. Benedict Kingsbury, Faculty Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice, works on the issues of indigenous peoples and directs the Program in the History and Theory of International Law. Joseph H.H. Weiler, a preeminent scholar of the European Union and the World Trade Organization, has moved from Harvard Law School to head two NYU School of Law initiatives, the Hauser Global Law School Program and the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice.
(Clockwise from left) Joseph Weiler, Benedict Kingsbury, David Golove, Mattias Kumm, Phillip Alston
Up-and-comers in the field include Mattias Kumm, who examines relations between national and international courts in the context of multi-level governance and is also trained in philosophy, and Katrina Wyman, who works on tradable permits and institutional design for international environmental protection.
The international law faculty is complemented by many colleagues who interweave expertise in particular countries or regions of the world with specific areas of law. Jerome Cohen, the doyen of U.S. scholars of Chinese law, uses his unique experience to teach courses that focus on both the legal aspects of doing business with Asia and the development of legal institutions in societies such as China and Vietnam. Eleanor Fox (’61), one of America’s leading experts on antitrust law, brings her knowledge of global competition law to her very popular antitrust courses. Linda Silberman has represented the United States in the Hague Conference on Private International Law and is an expert on international child abduction law and on jurisdiction and judgments issues.
Richard Stewart, a preeminent figure in U.S. environmental and administrative law and director of the Center on Environmental and Land Use Law, involves students in international legal research projects on global climate change and on genetically-modified products. Each week in the Spring semester, Stewart and Kingsbury convene the Colloquium on Globalization and Its Discontents, currently on the theme of developing global administrative law. Frank Upham is a leading scholar of Japanese law. Noah Feldman holds a doctorate in Arabic philosophy and has served as senior advisor for constitutional law in the U.S. Government’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq. Stephen Holmes publishes a journal exploring the development of democracy in the former Soviet bloc. Both Feldman and Holmes are faculty co-directors of the Center on Law and Security. Geoffrey Miller directs a center studying the roles and independence of central banks. Burt Neuborne plays a leading role in transnational tort litigation related to the Holocaust. Bryan Stevenson integrates national and international work on death-penalty issues. Smita Narula is a renowned expert on caste discrimination and the rise of religious nationalism in South Asia. Margaret Satterthwaite is a leading advocate on gender, sexuality, and human rights and the human rights of migrants. Narula and Satterthwaite are directors of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. New appointee Kevin Davis, who joins NYU from a professorship at the University of Toronto, works on commercial and financial law aspects of law and development and related issues of governance and has particular expertise on Caribbean and small island economies and polities. Cristina Rodriguez, also recently appointed, works on language rights in the U.S. and other countries. Other faculty focus on subjects ranging from international intellectual property and cyberspace law to transnational sweatshops and global public service lawyering.
Global faculty teaching in this broad field include: Mohammed Arkoun, emeritus professor of the history of Islamic law at the University of Paris; Eyal Benvenisti, professor of law at Tel Aviv University and director of the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law; Sabino Cassese, professor of public and administrative law in Rome; Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka, longtime U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women; Grainne de Burca, professor of European Union Law at the European University Institute, Florence; Olivier De Schutter, professor of international and European human rights at the University of Louvain, Belgium; Franco Ferrari, former advisor to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law; Richard Goldstone, former justice of the South African Constitutional Court; Dieter Grimm, a former judge on the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany; Christian Joerges, professor of economic law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy; Ratna Kapur, director of the Center of Feminist Legal Research in New Delhi, India; Martti Koskenniemi of Finland, member of the U.N. International Law Commission; Carlos Rosenkrantz, professor of constitutional law at the University of Buenos Aires Law School in Argentina; Janet Walker, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, a specialist in conflict of laws, international commerical arbitration and transnational litigation; Ruth Rubio-Marin, professor of constitutional law at the University of Sevilla, Spain; and many others.
What makes NYU School of Law special is that these issues are examined not as isolated topics, but as part of an integrated curriculum that deepens understanding of the complex interactions between diverse national, international, and global legal structures and cultures. NYU School of Law is one of very few law schools in the world with the capacity to make such a far-reaching, integrated international law program a reality.
The study of international law at NYU is integrally connected with the Law School’s unique Hauser Global Law School Program, which reflects and responds to the interconnections and influences of laws and legal systems of various nations on one another. It encompasses a broad range of topics and extends to informal transnational practices between corporate actors or non-governmental organizations, whether in the reinsurance market, the development of arbitration procedures, or legal aspects of public-private partnerships for AIDS prevention.
International law — and the international law program at the Law School — is a crucial but distinctive part of this larger global enterprise. International law is a long-established formal system for making rules, creating institutions, and settling disputes between countries. Traditional intergovernmental techniques for making and enforcing law between states remain important, even as the new demands of global governance force international lawyers to adapt and remake them. The Law School’s international law faculty are preeminent experts in this central but special component of global law. The international law program’s mission is to impart this distinctive faculty expertise to students in their training to become practitioners, policy-makers, and scholars. Together with faculty, students in the J.D, LL.M. (Masters) and J.S.D. (Doctoral) programs form a community of scholars working on a wide range of current international law issues. The program ensures that students studying diverse global topics also acquire the essential understanding of the larger system of international law in which they are embedded.
At the core of the Law School’s continued innovation in international law is the Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) and its affiliated Centers and Programs: the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, the Jean Monnet Center for Regional and International Economic Law and Justice, and the Program in the History and Theory of International Law. The Institute and Centers bring together an extraordinary set of research programs and specialized degrees. Students are involved in all IILJ activities and actively engage in many other joint student-faculty international law endeavors at the Law School. These include student organizations, journals, and public events in international law to further enrich their education. In addition, NYU School of Law supports students in an incomparable range of internships around the world, as well as funding post-graduation fellowships and clerkships to help students start their careers in international law.
In addition to the J.D., LL.M. and J.S.D. programs, the School has recently established two innovative degree programs for students wishing to undertake sustained scholarship across a range of fields related to international law. The J.D.-LL.M. and LL.M.-J.S.D. programs in international bring together excellent students to receive specialist training in international law, particular emphasis on scholarship and research.
