Benedict Kingsbury is Vice Dean and Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He has served as Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice since its founding in 2002, and in 2018 was appointed as the faculty director of the Law School's newly-inaugurated Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies, creating the innovative Guarini Global Law & Tech initiative. Projects he has co-directed at the IILJ include the Program in the History and Theory of International Law (with Professor Rob Howse and Global Professor Martti Koskenniemi); the Global Administrative Law Project (with Professor Richard B. Stewart); and the research project on Governance by Indicators (with Professors Kevin Davis and Sally Engle Merry). His major current projects focus on large scale global ordering such as TPP and the Belt & Road Initiative (Megareg); physical, digital, and informational infrastructure (Infrareg, with Sally Merry); and global data/tech law. From 2013-18 he was joint Editor in Chief (with Jose Alvarez) of the American Journal of International Law, a premier journal in the field, and helped create the online AJIL Unbound. He is one of the editors (with Andrew Hurrell of Oxford University, and Dick Stewart) of the Oxford University Press Law and Global Governance book series. His research projects on global governance issues have been supported by the National Science Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and currently the Ford and Sloan Foundations. In 2019 he received the Law School's Podell Distinguished Teaching Award.Read more
After completing his LL.B. with first class honors at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand in 1981, Professor Kingsbury was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1984 he graduated at the top of his class in the M.Phil in International Relations at Oxford, supervised by the distinguished theorist Hedley Bull. He subsequently completed a D.Phil in Law at Oxford, supervised by Chichele Professor Ian Brownlie QC, and thereafter held a permanent teaching position in the Law Faculty at Oxford before moving to Duke University in 1993. Kingsbury has been on the permanent faculty at the Law School since 1998. He served for 10 years on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of International Law, and was awarded the Journal's Deak Prize for the best article by a younger scholar. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Gentiliani, and of the Council of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S), and serves on the Advisory Boards of numerous book series and scholarly journals.
Kingsbury's research and publications reflect a strong commitment to a broad, theoretically-grounded approach to international law, closely integrating work in legal theory, political theory (including international relations theory), and history. With NYU colleague Richard Stewart, he initiated and directs the IILJ's Global Administrative Law Research Project, a pioneering approach to issues of accountability and participation in global governance which includes several books and journal symposia and more than 250 scholarly papers by different authors. His article with Kevin Davis and Sally Merry on Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance (2012), and edited books on Governance by Indicators (OUP, 2012) and The Quiet Power of Indicators (2015), helped frame that field. He has sought to make an ethical case for sovereignty and for a critical positivism in international law. He is prominent among legal scholars who have argued for the importance and explanatory power of constructivist approaches to concepts such as "compliance" and "indigenous peoples." In works on the Grotian tradition in international law, and on such writers as Alberico Gentili (1552-1608) and Lassa Oppenheim, he has traced the role of particular theories of international society and international politics in the history of international law. Two of his co-edited books on Gentili's work were published by Oxford University Press, and he became an Honorary Citizen of San Ginesio, Gentili's birthplace, in 2010. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in law by Tilburg University in the Netherlands in 2016.
Kingsbury has written on a range of specific contemporary international law topics, extending from investor-state arbitration and inter-state arbitration to trade-environment disputes and the proliferation of international tribunals. United Nations, Divided World, co-edited with Sir Adam Roberts, was published in a Chinese edition in 2010. He has had extensive academic and practical involvement with issues relating to indigenous peoples.
Kingsbury has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Tokyo Law Faculty, the University of Padua, the University of Paris-I (Pantheon-Sorbonne), and the University of Utah. He was the inaugural Caldwell Lecturer at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, and the New Zealand Law Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow.
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AlstonProfessor Lauren
BentonProfessor Benedict
KingsburyFaculty Director Katrina
WymanProfessor Joseph
WeilerProfessor Jeremy
WaldronProfessor Frank
UphamProfessor Richard
StewartProfessor Linda
SilbermanProfessor Margaret
SatterthwaiteProfessor David
GoloveProfessor Franco
FerrariProfessor Eleanor
FoxProfessor Gráinne
de Búrca Professor Jerome
Cohen Professor José
Alvarez Professor Kevin
Davis Professor Mattias
KummProfessor Mitchell
KaneProfessor Robert
HowseProfessor Ryan
GoodmanProfessor Stephen
HolmesProfessor Theodor
MeronProfessor Eyal
BenvenistiProfessor Simon
ChestermanSenior Fellow Megan
DonaldsonFellow Nimrod
KarinJSD Candidate Martti
KoskenniemiProfessor Joanna
LangilleFellow Karin
LoevyVisiting Scholar David
MaloneSenior Fellow Sally
MerryProfessor Edefe
OjomoJSD Candidate Chelsea
AnelliIILJ Scholar Mikaela
EdigerIILJ Scholar Nathaniel
EisenIILJ Scholar Tess
GrahamIILJ Scholar Claire
SchupmannIILJ Scholar Caroline
ZielinskiIILJ Scholar Suraiya-Asmau
Zubair BanuIILJ Scholar Angelina
FisherProgram Director Rachel
JonesAdministrator Paul
MertenskötterInstitute Fellow Thomas
StreinzInstitute Fellow Benjamin
StraumannSenior Fellow Sarah
CocoIILJ Scholar Isabelle
GlimcherIILJ Scholar Gabriele
WadligJSD student Helen
HershkoffProfessor Alissa
ClarkeIILJ Scholar Deborah Kay
BurandProfessor Liam
MurphyProfessor Michele
KrechJSD student Jackson
GandourIILJ Scholar Robert
BartonIILJ Scholar Tatiana
August-SchmidtIILJ Scholar Harlan G.
CohenSenior Fellow Tleuzhan
ZhunussovaGlobal Fellow Kathryn
GundersenIILJ Scholar Lucas
CuatrecasasIILJ Scholar Sasha
BoutilierIILJ Scholar Camilla
AkbariIILJ Scholar Madhu
NarasimhanIILJ Scholar Elena
HodgesIILJ Scholar Beenish
RiazIILJ Scholar Francesca
IurlaroGlobal Fellow Henok Birhanu
AsmelashGlobal Fellow Veronica
FikfakGlobal Fellow Carlos Andrés
Baquero-DíazJSD student Katrina
GeddesJSD student Ngozi
NwantaJSD student Mengjing
Kong JSD Candidate