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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: 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 judge (and former president) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
They helped recruit to the faculty several of the leading international law scholars of the next generation, who synergize among their many areas of specialization through joint leadership of the integrated research projects and teaching of the International Law and Justice. 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 (with Smita Narula and Meg Satterthwaite) of the Law School's 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 Center on Law and Security (with Stephen Holmes, Rick Pildes and Sam Rascoff). Robert Howse, a leading expert on the World Trade Organization and on international investment law, also works on legal theory. Benedict Kingsbury, Faculty Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice, also directs the Program in the History and Theory of International Law. Mattias Kumm examines relations between national and international courts in the context of multi-level governance, and is also trained in philosophy. Joseph H. H. Weiler, a preeminent scholar of the European Union and the World Trade Organization, convenes the IILJ International Legal Theory Colloquium and the IILJ Advanced International Law seminar jointly with Benedict Kingsbury.
Some of the NYU international law faculty at the founding conference of the Institute for International Law and Justice: (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. |
The nature of global legal problems in the real world make it vital to transcend the formal divide that in many academic institutions separates international law from other areas of law, normative inquiry, and policy, faculty. The IILJ closely integrates international law faculty with many other faculty working on particular legal and policy areas or particular countries or regions of the world. Participants in IILJ projects and pedagogy include the following members of the permanent faculty, as well as other faculty members and a core of global faculty and other close collaborators around the world. Steve Choi works on transnational securities law issues and sovereign debt.
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 China's approaches to international law. Kevin Davis works on commercial and financial law aspects of law and development, and heads the IILJ's financing development project, a field of the legal academy in which he has played a pioneering role. Rochelle Dreyfuss is co-authoring a book on TRIPS, and contributes to IILJ projects on global governance of intellectual property issues. Eleanor Fox, 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. Stewart and Kingsbury convene the Colloquium on Globalization and Its Discontents, bringing students directly into the IILJ's pathbreaking Global Administrative Law project, which they co-direct. Frank Upham is a leading scholar of Japanese and Chinese law, and also teaches law and development. Katrina Wyman works on tradable permits and institutional design for international environmental protection, and helps frame approaches to international environmental law and policy. Jeremy Waldron and Liam Murphy both work on Law and Philosophy approaches to international legal issues, and Tom Nagel and Sam Scheffler have done very influential work on global justice from philosophical perspectives. Stephen Holmes, a political theorist and expert on central and eastern Europe, now focuses on problems of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and helps lead the Law School's very active Center on Law and Security. Sally Engle Merry, who integrates anthropology and human rights in NYU's Institute for Law and Society, plays a leading role in the IILJ's project on indicators as a form of global governance. Geoffrey Miller directs a center studying the roles and independence of central banks. Smita Narula is a renowned expert on caste discrimination and the rise of religious nationalism in South Asia. Margaret Satterthwaite is a prominent scholar and 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. Burt Neuborne plays a leading role in transnational tort litigation related to the Holocaust. Cristina Rodriguez works on language rights in the U.S. and other countries. Bryan Stevenson integrates national and international work on death-penalty issues. Other faculty focus on subjects ranging from the work of Lily Batchelder and Mitch Kane on international tax and development, to Sam Estreicher's work on cross-border labor law issues, Sam Issacharoff's scholarship on the comparative law of elections and political parties, Ricky Revesz's studies of risk and discount rates and the interests of future generations in relation to climate change, Holly Maguigan's work on transnational sweatshops, and Helen Hershkoff's projects on global public service lawyering.
The IILJ maintains active links with the NYU program based in partnership with the National University of Singapore, through IILJ Senior Fellow Simon Chesterman, who directs the NYU@NUS program while heading up IILJ project on the UN Security Council and international rule of law, as well as work on sovereign wealth funds and other issues.
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 commercial 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 an innovative degree program for students wishing to undertake sustained scholarship across a range of fields related to international law. The J.D.-LL.M. program in international law brings together excellent students to receive specialized training in international law, with particular emphasis on scholarship and research.
