About
UVA Law School has long been one of the country’s most distinguished institutions of teaching and research in international law. Faculty and graduates of the Law School played pivotal roles in the United States’ engagement with international law and institutions. John Bassett Moore, an 1880 graduate, served as assistant U.S. secretary of state and was the first American judge to serve on the Permanent Court of International Justice. Dean Hardy Cross Dillard, also a graduate, later served as a judge on the International Court of Justice, and Monroe Leigh, a leading international law scholar, served as legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State and president of the American Society of International Law. The Virginia Journal of International Law is the oldest continuously published, student-edited law review in the United States, and remains one of the finest and most cited.
In more recent years, Professor Emeritus John Norton Moore served as a U.S. ambassador to the negotiations that produced the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, after which he established the world’s leading research center in this area. Professor Richard Lillich, who served on the faculty from 1969 until his death in 1996, was a founder of the field of international human rights law. Professor Emeritus David Martin is the leading academic expert on U.S. immigration law and served as general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and as deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security. Four members of the faculty have served as counselor for international law to the legal adviser of the State Department, twice as many as any other law school. One of them, Professor Paul Stephan, led a team of experts in producing the American Law Institute’s “Fourth Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States.”
The Program Today
Today, the Law School continues this tradition with one of the strongest international law programs in the country. It offers a wide range of courses that cover all major areas, including international trade and finance, human rights and immigration, the law governing war and use of force, environmental law, international litigation and arbitration, and comparative constitutional law. Its faculty includes internationally renowned experts in these fields. In addition, foreign professors are regularly invited to teach seminars on topics such as European Union law and comparative law, and students may take select courses at the neighboring Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. The Law School offers semester-long exchanges with several leading law faculties abroad and a dual-degree program with Sciences Po in Paris.
Experiencing International Law in Practice
The Law School offers multiple opportunities for students to experience international law in practice. Its curriculum includes the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Human Rights Study Project, which yearly sends a student team to research and document human rights issues in a foreign country. Monroe Leigh Fellowships and Public Interest Law Association (PILA) grants allow students to pursue a public international law project during the summer. These have included internships with the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the U.N. World Food Program, the International Finance Corporation, the U.S. Department of Justice, the CDC’s Global AIDS Project, and nongovernmental organizations such as EarthRights International, the International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Now. The Law School also offers a yearly fellowship for a student to spend a year as a full-time trainee at the International Court of Justice after graduation.
Extracurricular Opportunities
The Law School is also home to dynamic student organizations devoted to international law. As noted above, the Virginia Journal of International Law is the finest and most authoritative student-run international law journal in the United States, while the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law organizes lectures and social events. The two organizations co-sponsor an annual symposium on an international law topic that brings distinguished academics and practitioners to the Law School. The Law School’s teams also participate in several international law moots, and frequently advance to the international round of the Jessup International Law Moot Court competition.
National Security Law Center
The Law School hosts the National Security Law Center, which allows students to study the most pressing issues in national security law and to explore the wide range of career opportunities available in the field. The center takes advantage of the Law School’s proximity to the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School and the wide range of national security practitioners in Washington, D.C., to enrich the Law School’s course offerings with expert speakers from government and policy groups.
Research
The Law School’s Arthur Morris Law Library hosts extensive collections and offers online research resources on international law and foreign and comparative law.
Assessing the legitimacy of any legal system is hard, but especially if the system in question is the volatile and contested field of international...
Countries hit by unexpected crises often look to their overseas diasporas for assistance. Some countries have tapped into this generosity of their...
In an international system that lacks centralized authority, the burden of enforcing the law generally falls on individual states. In many areas of...
Lee C. Buchheit
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
Oona A. Hathaway
The Supreme Court’s recent expansion of the major questions doctrine has rocked administrative law, throwing into doubt executive agencies’ statutory...
National constitutions codify provisions on a wide range of topics, ranging from presidential term limits to the country’s flag. But are all...
Faculty Director(s)
Paul B. Stephan
John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law
Senior Fellow, Miller Center
Director, Center for International & Comparative Law
Research
Assessing the legitimacy of any legal system is hard, but especially if the system in question is the volatile and contested field of international...
Countries hit by unexpected crises often look to their overseas diasporas for assistance. Some countries have tapped into this generosity of their...
In an international system that lacks centralized authority, the burden of enforcing the law generally falls on individual states. In many areas of...
Lee C. Buchheit
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
Oona A. Hathaway
The Supreme Court’s recent expansion of the major questions doctrine has rocked administrative law, throwing into doubt executive agencies’ statutory...
National constitutions codify provisions on a wide range of topics, ranging from presidential term limits to the country’s flag. But are all...
In an era defined by partisan rifts and government gridlock, many celebrate the rare issues that prompt bipartisan consensus. But extreme consensus...
In this article, we examine the relations between risk, the choice of foreign or local contract terms (parameters), and maturity in the sovereign debt...
Both theorists and courts commonly assume that high-dollar financial contracts between sophisticated parties are free of linguistic errors...
At the inception of a new and potentially transformative type of tax enforcement, this Article reviews the goals underlying the prohibition on state...
States are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence systems to enhance their national security decision-making. The real risks that states will...
More
National security review of corporate transactions has long been a relatively sleepy corner of regulatory policy. But as governments merge economic...
Lee C. Buchheit
All sovereign debt restructurings are inherently messy, expensive, exasperating, time-consuming and contentious. These are the familiar pathologies in...
This article develops a positive, decision-theoretical model of the logic that states use in drafting, negotiating, approving, and ratifying...
More
Economic and financial sanctions have become one of the most prominent tools of U.S. foreign policy. The relevant sanctions programs are complex and...
In this article, Mason explains how the OECD's proposed Pillar 2 global minimum tax rules induce cooperation by states, and how the proposal to enact...
Wenwen Ding
As China reformed its economy during the past 44 years, it experienced the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history, with an annual...
There may be no place in the contemporary world where the global collides more acutely with the local than the Kingdom of Bhutan. On the one hand, it...
Joseph Blocher
The United States acquired its first overseas territory—the island of Navassa, near Haiti—by conceptualizing it as a kind of property to be owned...
Charles Crabtree
A growing experimental literature suggests that international law appears to have a larger impact on public opinion than constitutional law. Because...
This article analyses those hurdles, which are different for privately owned property such as oligarch yachts and state property such as bank deposits...
Machine learning algorithms hold out the promise of making sense of vast quantities of information, detecting patterns, and identifying anomalies...
Kim Oosterlinck
Ugo Panizza
Mark C. Weidemaier
... In 1825, France conditioned its grant of recognition to the new nation of Haiti on the payment of 150 million francs plus trade benefits. The payments...
More
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put to the test theories about how cyberattacks fit into conventional war. Contrary to many expectations, cyber...
This introductory chapter uses the framework of pedagogical choice to articulate and compare competing visions of how the field should be...
More
When a state suffers an internationally wrongful act at the hands of another state, international law allows the injured state to respond in a variety...
More
Hsiang-Yang Hsieh
Scholars frequently distinguish between “hard” and “soft” forms of judicial review: “hard” review gives courts the final say on constitutional...
Paolo Colla
An implication of the incompleteness of contracts is that there are going to be gaps and ambiguities that either side can exploit. We ask whether the...
Michael Bradley
Irving de Lira Salvatierra
W. Mark C. Weidemaier
...In 2018, Russia began inserting an unusual clause into euro and dollar sovereign bonds, seemingly designed to circumvent future Western sanctions. The...
In this article, Mason explains why the Commission lost the Fiat state-aid appeal before the Court of Justice of the European Union. She also argues...
More
Core International Law Faculty
Virginia Law’s international law faculty includes some of the nation’s leading experts in their respective fields. They regularly teach international law courses, organize and participate in international law events and conferences, and supervise independent research in their areas of expertise:
Kevin Cope
Kevin Cope’s research applies social science methods to the study of international institutions, migration, and political attitudes toward international law. One of Cope’s major research initiatives involves multilateral treaty-making, in which he applies a theoretical model to negotiating data collected from the archived records of the last few decades’ most significant conventions, with the goal of improving future treaty-making processes. Before coming to the Law School, Cope clerked for three federal judges and practiced government enforcement litigation law in Washington, D.C., with Skadden, Arps, where he handled matters involving treaties, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, immigration law and the World Bank.
Ashley Deeks
Ashley Deeks teaches and writes on international law and national security issues. Before coming to UVA in 2012, she served as the assistant legal adviser for political-military affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser, as well as the Embassy legal adviser at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2005, during Iraq’s constitutional negotiations. She was a 2007-08 Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow and a visiting fellow in residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Since joining the Law School, she has been frequently quoted in the national media on topics such as legal justifications for war, diplomatic immunity, the Edward Snowden affair, and the use of cyber and drone warfare.
Kristen Eichensehr
Kristen Eichensehr writes and teaches about cybersecurity, foreign relations, international law and national security law. She has written on, among other issues, the attribution of state-sponsored cyberattacks, the important roles that private parties play in cybersecurity, the constitutional allocation of powers between the president and Congress in foreign relations, and the role of foreign sovereign amici in the Supreme Court. She received the 2018 Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article, “Courts, Congress, and the Conduct of Foreign Relations,” published in the University of Chicago Law Review. In 2021 she became director of UVA Law’s National Security Law Center.
Mitu Gulati
Mitu Gulati’s work focuses on sovereign debt restructuring and contracts, and explores how to help countries in financial distress. Gulati co-hosts the podcast “Clauses and Controversies,” is a contributor to the blog Creditslips.org and serves as regional editor for the journal Capital Markets Law Journal.
David S. Law
David Law is an internationally recognized expert in the comparative study of public law and courts, and a pioneer in the application of empirical social science methods to the study of legal texts. His scholarship combines qualitative fieldwork on foreign judicial and constitutional systems, quantitative analysis of constitutions and treaties, and regional expertise on Asia. Before joining the Virginia faculty, Law held the Sir Y.K. Pao Chair in Public Law at the University of Hong Kong. Law earned his B.A. in public policy and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford. Born and raised in western Canada, he is a native Mandarin speaker.
Tom Nachbar
Tom Nachbar works extensively in the national security arena, focusing on law of armed conflict and the role of legal institutions in counterinsurgency and stability operations. He is a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he has, among other assignments, edited an Army handbook on the development of legal systems, trained Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and deployed to Iraq. He is a senior fellow at the Center for National Security Law.
Camilo Sanchez
Camilo Sanchez has worked as a consultant and legal expert on different human rights issues for academic, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. He is also director of the International Human Rights Clinic. In his 15-year legal career, Sanchez has worked on cases regarding enforced disappearances in Central America, attacks against human rights defenders in Mexico, and policies for reparations programs in post-conflict countries such as Guatemala, Peru and Colombia.
John Setear
John Setear’s scholarship focuses on the relationship between theories of international relations propounded by political scientists and the particular treaties and doctrines of international law created by lawyers. His teaching includes a series of seminars that examines the practical functioning of international law and U.S. constitutional law during a variety of historical periods, such as the Cold War.
Paul Stephan
Paul Stephan has taught international and comparative law at the Law School over four decades. He served as counselor on international law to the Legal Adviser of the State Department in 2006-07, and from 2012-18 was a coordinating reporter of the American Law Institute’s “Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States.” During 1993-98 he advised the Department of Treasury on providing technical assistance to the tax policy officials and tax administrators of the former socialist countries, and participated in the drafting of the Tax Codes of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan. He has been involved in numerous lawsuits and international arbitrations as an expert witness. He has written on international law, law and development, and international institutions as well as on tax policy and U.S. constitutional law.
Pierre-Hugues Verdier
Pierre-Hugues Verdier teaches and writes on international financial regulation and on broader public international law topics including foreign state immunity, customary international law, and the reception of international law in national legal systems. His research has appeared in both law reviews and peer-reviewed academic journals, and in recent years he has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty, he practiced corporate and securities law with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York. He is a graduate of McGill University’s joint common law and civil law program, received master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard Law School, and clerked for Justice Charles Gonthier of the Supreme Court of Canada. He is one of six Canadians to be awarded the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law.
Mila Versteeg
Mila Versteeg specializes in comparative constitutional law, international human rights law and empirical legal studies. Most of her research deals with the origins, evolution and effectiveness of provisions protecting fundamental rights. Her academic publications have appeared in numerous leading law reviews and social science journals; some have been reported on by national news organizations and translated in several foreign languages. In 2017, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, which provided her with a $200,000 award to expand her research into the world's constitutions to better understand how constitutional rights are enforced in different countries. Versteeg is a graduate of Tilburg University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University.
Other Resident Faculty With International Law Interests
In addition, other faculty members teach courses and supervise papers related to international law, often with a focus on a specific subfield or area:
- Aditya Bamzai
- Michal Barzuza
- Darryl K. Brown
- Michael D. Gilbert
- Andrew Hayashi
- Ruth Mason
- Dotan Oliar
- George Rutherglen
- Steven D. Walt
Visiting/Adjunct Faculty
Paul B. Stephan, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and a former adviser to multiple presidents and foreign governments, offers insights about the history and shaky future of the international order in his latest book, “The World Crisis and International Law: The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future,” published by Cambridge University Press.
UVA Law professor Mitu Gulati and Lee Buchheit, formerly of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, discuss how sovereign debt restructuring sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic will play out in 2022 and 2023. Dean Risa Goluboff introduced Gulati and Buchheit.
Core International Law Faculty
Virginia Law’s international law faculty includes some of the nation’s leading experts in their respective fields. They regularly teach international law courses, organize and participate in international law events and conferences, and supervise independent research in their areas of expertise:
Kevin Cope
Kevin Cope’s research applies social science methods to the study of international institutions, migration, and political attitudes toward international law. One of Cope’s major research initiatives involves multilateral treaty-making, in which he applies a theoretical model to negotiating data collected from the archived records of the last few decades’ most significant conventions, with the goal of improving future treaty-making processes. Before coming to the Law School, Cope clerked for three federal judges and practiced government enforcement litigation law in Washington, D.C., with Skadden, Arps, where he handled matters involving treaties, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, immigration law and the World Bank.
Ashley Deeks
Ashley Deeks teaches and writes on international law and national security issues. Before coming to UVA in 2012, she served as the assistant legal adviser for political-military affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser, as well as the Embassy legal adviser at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2005, during Iraq’s constitutional negotiations. She was a 2007-08 Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow and a visiting fellow in residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Since joining the Law School, she has been frequently quoted in the national media on topics such as legal justifications for war, diplomatic immunity, the Edward Snowden affair, and the use of cyber and drone warfare.
Kristen Eichensehr
Kristen Eichensehr writes and teaches about cybersecurity, foreign relations, international law and national security law. She has written on, among other issues, the attribution of state-sponsored cyberattacks, the important roles that private parties play in cybersecurity, the constitutional allocation of powers between the president and Congress in foreign relations, and the role of foreign sovereign amici in the Supreme Court. She received the 2018 Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article, “Courts, Congress, and the Conduct of Foreign Relations,” published in the University of Chicago Law Review. In 2021 she became director of UVA Law’s National Security Law Center.
Mitu Gulati
Mitu Gulati’s work focuses on sovereign debt restructuring and contracts, and explores how to help countries in financial distress. Gulati co-hosts the podcast “Clauses and Controversies,” is a contributor to the blog Creditslips.org and serves as regional editor for the journal Capital Markets Law Journal.
David S. Law
David Law is an internationally recognized expert in the comparative study of public law and courts, and a pioneer in the application of empirical social science methods to the study of legal texts. His scholarship combines qualitative fieldwork on foreign judicial and constitutional systems, quantitative analysis of constitutions and treaties, and regional expertise on Asia. Before joining the Virginia faculty, Law held the Sir Y.K. Pao Chair in Public Law at the University of Hong Kong. Law earned his B.A. in public policy and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford. Born and raised in western Canada, he is a native Mandarin speaker.
Tom Nachbar
Tom Nachbar works extensively in the national security arena, focusing on law of armed conflict and the role of legal institutions in counterinsurgency and stability operations. He is a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he has, among other assignments, edited an Army handbook on the development of legal systems, trained Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and deployed to Iraq. He is a senior fellow at the Center for National Security Law.
Camilo Sanchez
Camilo Sanchez has worked as a consultant and legal expert on different human rights issues for academic, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. He is also director of the International Human Rights Clinic. In his 15-year legal career, Sanchez has worked on cases regarding enforced disappearances in Central America, attacks against human rights defenders in Mexico, and policies for reparations programs in post-conflict countries such as Guatemala, Peru and Colombia.
John Setear
John Setear’s scholarship focuses on the relationship between theories of international relations propounded by political scientists and the particular treaties and doctrines of international law created by lawyers. His teaching includes a series of seminars that examines the practical functioning of international law and U.S. constitutional law during a variety of historical periods, such as the Cold War.
Paul Stephan
Paul Stephan has taught international and comparative law at the Law School over four decades. He served as counselor on international law to the Legal Adviser of the State Department in 2006-07, and from 2012-18 was a coordinating reporter of the American Law Institute’s “Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States.” During 1993-98 he advised the Department of Treasury on providing technical assistance to the tax policy officials and tax administrators of the former socialist countries, and participated in the drafting of the Tax Codes of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan. He has been involved in numerous lawsuits and international arbitrations as an expert witness. He has written on international law, law and development, and international institutions as well as on tax policy and U.S. constitutional law.
Pierre-Hugues Verdier
Pierre-Hugues Verdier teaches and writes on international financial regulation and on broader public international law topics including foreign state immunity, customary international law, and the reception of international law in national legal systems. His research has appeared in both law reviews and peer-reviewed academic journals, and in recent years he has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty, he practiced corporate and securities law with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York. He is a graduate of McGill University’s joint common law and civil law program, received master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard Law School, and clerked for Justice Charles Gonthier of the Supreme Court of Canada. He is one of six Canadians to be awarded the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law.
Mila Versteeg
Mila Versteeg specializes in comparative constitutional law, international human rights law and empirical legal studies. Most of her research deals with the origins, evolution and effectiveness of provisions protecting fundamental rights. Her academic publications have appeared in numerous leading law reviews and social science journals; some have been reported on by national news organizations and translated in several foreign languages. In 2017, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, which provided her with a $200,000 award to expand her research into the world's constitutions to better understand how constitutional rights are enforced in different countries. Versteeg is a graduate of Tilburg University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University.
Other Resident Faculty With International Law Interests
In addition, other faculty members teach courses and supervise papers related to international law, often with a focus on a specific subfield or area:
- Aditya Bamzai
- Michal Barzuza
- Darryl K. Brown
- Michael D. Gilbert
- Andrew Hayashi
- Ruth Mason
- Dotan Oliar
- George Rutherglen
- Steven D. Walt
Visiting/Adjunct Faculty
Paul B. Stephan, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and a former adviser to multiple presidents and foreign governments, offers insights about the history and shaky future of the international order in his latest book, “The World Crisis and International Law: The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future,” published by Cambridge University Press.
UVA Law professor Mitu Gulati and Lee Buchheit, formerly of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, discuss how sovereign debt restructuring sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic will play out in 2022 and 2023. Dean Risa Goluboff introduced Gulati and Buchheit.
Curriculum
- Core Course
- Specialized Courses
- Advanced Courses and Seminars
- Clinics, Field Research and Professional Skills
- Sample International Law Course Sequences
- All International Law Courses and Seminars
Students can choose from an extensive selection of courses that cover all major areas of international law, and have the flexibility to construct a curriculum of broad-based instruction in the field or to concentrate on a specialized area of interest such as international trade and investment, international litigation and dispute resolution, international human rights, or national security and the use of force.
Core Course
The core course is International Law. It introduces the fundamental notions of the field, such as how treaties are made and applied, how international law rules are identified and interpreted, the legal status of states, governments and international organizations, the circumstances in which international law is applied in U.S. courts, and the role and functioning of international courts and tribunals.
Because these notions apply across all areas of international law, it is a required or recommended prerequisite for many specialized courses. Students are encouraged to take it in the spring of their first year or the fall of their second year, before moving on to more advanced courses, seminars and clinics.
International law also deals with the ways that nation states incorporate or otherwise refer to foreign law in their domestic legal systems. This subfield of international law is often called private international law, although the lines between public and private are sometimes blurred. A focus on comparative law — that is, the study of non-U.S. law — benefits from familiarity with private international law as well as the general principles of international law that define it.
The study of non-U.S. legal systems is important independent of its ties to private international law. Comparative law has practical benefits, because legal practice increasingly entails dealing with transactions or disputes that cross international borders. Moreover, the experience of different legal systems in addressing particular social or political problems can illuminate how law does and can work. Foreign practice also may point to alternative approaches that might be normatively more or less attractive than those found in the U.S. legal system. Ultimately, an appreciation of foreign law is an essential part of having an informed view on the law generally.
Specialized Courses
These courses provide surveys of specialized areas of international law, covering the main rules, treaties and organizations that govern them. The aim of these courses is to equip students with the fundamental substantive knowledge in their subfield of international law.
As such, they also serve to bridge the gap between the core International Law course and more advanced practical or research-oriented offerings. For example, the International Human Rights Law course lays the substantive groundwork for students wishing to take the Human Rights Study Project and/or the International Human Rights Law Clinic.
Examples of such courses include: Admiralty, Conflict of Laws, European Union Law, Immigration Law, International Arbitration, International Environmental Law, International Finance, International Human Rights Law, International Investment Arbitration, International Law and the Use of Force, International Taxation, International Trade, Law of Armed Conflict, National Security Law, and Oceans Law and Policy
Advanced Courses and Seminars
These courses provide students with the opportunity to reflect on, and sometimes conduct independent research in, specialized areas of international law. They often take the form of small seminars in which students and faculty tackle the broader policy questions that arise in an area, how they are addressed under existing arrangements, how they relate to broader theoretical ideas or empirical research, and how reform proposals should be developed or evaluated.
This category also includes advanced courses that examine specific aspects of an area of international law, and comparative and foreign law courses that examine the laws of a specific foreign jurisdiction or the laws on a given topic across several foreign jurisdictions.
Examples of such courses include: An American Half-Century, Antitrust in the Global Economy, Building the Rule of Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Emerging Markets: Principles and Practice, EU Taxation, European Company Law, French Public and Private Law, Globalization and Private Dispute Resolution, International Banking Transactions, Legal and Policy Issues of the Indochina War, Topics in International Tax, Unconventional Warfare, War and Peace: New Thinking about the Causes of War and War Avoidance, and World War I.
Clinics, Field Research and Professional Skills
These clinics and courses offer opportunities for students to develop their practical skills in a specialized area of international law. As such, students interested in these offerings are strongly encouraged to first take the core International Law course and the basic subfield course in the relevant area (e.g., International Human Rights Law, Immigration Law or International Tax).
Examples of such courses include: Human Rights Study Project, Immigration Law Clinic, International Business Negotiation, International Civil Litigation, International Human Rights Law Clinic, International and Foreign Legal Research, and International Tax Practicum.
Sample International Law Course Sequences
The following sample course sequences are meant to assist students interested in each of the areas listed in selecting courses and the order in which to take them.
These sequences are not complete curricula; they leave substantial room for students to select additional courses based on their other interests. In doing so, students should take into account that some advanced international law courses have prerequisites outside the international law field (e.g., Antitrust for Antitrust in the Global Economy; Securities Regulation and/or Banking and Financial Institutions for International Finance; Federal Income Tax for International Tax; etc.)
International Business, Trade, Finance and Investment
Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law; Corporations
2L
Antitrust in the Global Economy
International Finance
International Trade (alongside other fundamental business courses: Securities Regulation, Accounting and Corporate Finance, Antitrust, Federal Income Tax, Commercial Sales, etc.)
3L
Admiralty
Economic Statecraft and Public International Law
Emerging Markets: Principles and Practice
Global Business and International Corruption
Global Contracting
International Business Negotiation
International Banking Transactions
International Sales Law
International Tax
International Investment Arbitration
International Tax Practicum
International Litigation and Dispute Resolution
Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law
2L
Conflict of Laws
Foreign Relations Law
Globalization and Private Dispute Resolution
3L
International Investment Arbitration
International Civil Litigation
International Settlement of Disputes: Methods and Forums
International Human Rights
Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law
2L
International Human Rights Law
Law of Armed Conflict
The Rule of Law
Immigration Law (alongside other civil rights, public service and related courses, e.g., Civil Rights Litigation, Employment Discrimination, Racial Justice and Law)
3L
Border Policy and Politics
Crimmigation
International Human Rights Law Clinic
Human Rights Study Project
Immigration Law Clinic
Law and Legality in Non-Democratic Contexts
Political Prisoners
U.S. Refugee and Asylum Law Seminar
National Security and Use of Force
Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law
2L
Foreign Relations Law
National Security Law
Law of Armed Conflict
3L
American Half-Century
Economic Statecraft and Public International Law
Economic Tools of National Security
Comparative Law
Spring IL or Fall 2L
International Law
2L
Comparative Constitutional Law
English Legal History to 1776
French Public and Private Law
Jewish Law
Law and Legality in Non-Democratic Contexts
Legal Theory in Europe and the United States
Perspectives on Sovereignty – Native American Law
3L
Comparative Freedom of Speech Law
Comparative Gender Equity
Rule of Law
All International Law Courses and Seminars
The following is a list of courses offered during 2022-25. Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered, i.e., 2022-23 is coded (23), 2023-24 is coded (24) and 2024-25 is coded (25). (SC) stands for short course and (YR) stands for yearlong.
Admiralty (SC) (24,25)
An American Half-Century (23,24,25)
Antitrust Review of Mergers in a Global Environment (23,24,25)
Chinese Law (SC) (23,24)
Climate Change Law (23)
Comparative Constitutional Law (23,24,25)
Comparative Freedom of Speech Law Seminar (24,25)
Comparative Gender Equality (23,24,25)
Constitutionalism: Nation, Culture and Constitutions (23,24)
Datafication, Automation and Inequality (SC) (23)
Emerging Markets: Principles and Practice (23,24,25)
European Union Law (SC) (24)
Foreign Relations Law (23,24,25)
French Public and Private Law (SC) (23,24,25)
Geopolitics, Law and the World Economy (25)
Global Business and International Corruption (SC) (23,24,25)
Global Contracting: A Case Study (SC) (23,24,25)
Global Legal History (23)
Globalization and Private Dispute Resolution (SC) (24,25)
Governing the World Seminar (23,24)
International and Comparative Family Law (SC) (23)
International Arbitration (24)
International Business Negotiation (23,24,25)
International Business Transactions (24,25)
International Civil Litigation (23)
International Debt Transactions (23)
International Environmental Law (23)
International Human Rights Law (23,24,25)
International Law (23,24,25)
International Law and the Use of Force (23)
International Sales Law (25)
International Settlement of Disputes: Methods and Forums (SC) (25)
International Tax Practicum (YR) (23,24,25)
International Taxation (23,24,25)
International Trade Law and Policy (23,24,25)
Israeli Business Law and Innovation (SC) (23)
Jewish Law Jurisprudence: From the Bible to the Rabbis (SC) (25)
Judicial Opinions (24)
Legal Theory in Europe and the United States: A Very Brief Introduction (SC) (23,24,25)
Legal Theory Workshop Seminar (25)
Native American Law (24)
Negotiating a Joint Venture in China (SC) (23)
Personal Data Protection in Europe (SC) (23)
Perspectives on Sovereignty - Native American Law (23,25)
Political Prisoners (SC) (24,25)
Seminar in Ethical Values (23,24,25)
Tax Treaties and Other International Tax Topics (23,24,25)
The Right to Protest (SC) (24)
War by Other Means: The Law of Economic and Financial Sanctions (SC) (23)
Clinics
Immigration Law Clinic (YR) (23,24,25)
International Human Rights Law Clinic (YR) (23,24,25)
University of Virginia School of Law professor Mitu Gulati has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary society and research center that dates back to the American Revolution.
Lee C. Buchheit, an expert in sovereign-debt restructuring and a former UVA Law School lecturer, discusses the current state and future of Russian assets frozen during the war with Ukraine. UVA Law professors Mitu Gulati, Paul B. Stephan ’77 and Pierre Hugues-Verdier also give remarks.
Extracurricular Activities
The Law School supports a thriving community of about 70 student-run organizations, including several that contribute to international law opportunities.
Related Student Organizations
Human Rights Study Project
The project's mission is to further the study of law affecting the protection of basic rights in foreign countries. Each year a project team travels abroad to research human rights issues in a specific country and report their findings. Student teams have traveled to Cuba, Sierra Leone, and Syria and Lebanon, China, India, Uganda, Cambodia and Egypt. Participants are selected by the prior year's student team based on applications submitted in the spring. More
John Bassett Moore Society of International Law
The J.B. Moore Society is a driving force in international law activities at the Law School. Each year the society hosts a symposium on topics such as the war on terror or corruption in foreign governments, as well as a lunch lecture series in which international law faculty and foreign graduate students present papers. The society also sponsors the Jessup International Law Moot Court team and pro bono human rights projects. Website
Virginia Journal of International Law
Now in its fifth decade, the Virginia Journal of International Law is the oldest continuously published, student-edited law review in the United States devoted exclusively to the fields of public and private international law. It is the most frequently cited student-edited journal of international and comparative law, and the third-most-frequently cited student-edited specialty journal of any kind. Website
Virginia Law Veterans
Virginia Law Veterans supports student members of the military community and serves as an information resource for anyone conducting research on national security or international law and policy issues. Membership is open to any interested person and does not require any past or present tie to the military. Website
Second-year student Rishabh Sharma, a former math teacher and wrestling coach, enjoys studying international debt law at the University of Virginia School of Law while also working toward a master’s in education policy.
University of Virginia law professor Mitu Gulati looks at the tragic history of Haiti’s 19th-century “odious debt” to France after islanders won their freedom from slavery, and discusses whether Haiti could recoup what it lost.
International Law Fellowship for the International Court of Justice Judicial Fellows Program
The University of Virginia School of Law has successfully placed several candidates in the International Court of Justice’s Judicial Fellows Program. When a candidate is selected, the UVA Law International Law Fellowship provides a stipend of $50,000 to assist with travel, living expenses and health insurance. The program at the court’s seat at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, begins in early September 2024 and runs to June/July 2025. Fellows sometimes extend their stay to participate in The Hague Academy of International Law, or to work with the judges through private arrangement.
The fellows program provides a unique opportunity to participate in the work of the ICJ, which is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. The court decides legal disputes submitted to it by states and provides advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by the U.N. or its specialized agencies.
In past years, UVA alumni such as McCoy Pitt ’13, Florian Knerr LL.M. ’14, Gulardi Nurbintoro LL.M. '14, Subarkah Syafruddin LL.M. ’16, Karen Janssens LL.M. ’14, Antonios Antonopoulos LL.M. ’11, Caitlin Stapleton ’09 and Annalise Nelson ’07 have joined graduates from some of the top U.S. and European law schools chosen to serve in the ICJ’s Judicial Fellows Program.
Eligibility
The fellowship is open to current UVA Law third-year, LL.M. and S.J.D. students (Class of 2025), as well as UVA Law J.D., LL.M. and S.J.D. graduates of the classes of 2020-24. To be eligible, the ICJ requires candidates to be 31 years of age or younger at the time the program begins.
Applicants must be proficient in one of the ICJ’s official languages (French or English); a very good working knowledge of the other is an advantage. They must have an excellent overall academic record as well as an excellent record in international law, with proven research and writing skills.
Responsibilities
Fellows generally work directly for an individual judge. They can expect to attend the court’s public hearings, to research and write memoranda for the judge on legal questions or factual aspects of pending cases, and to have some other involvement in the work of the court, the particulars of which will depend on the court’s docket and the working methods of the particular judge. For more information about the International Court of Justice, see www.icj-cij.org/en.
Application Process
UVA School of Law Internal Deadline: Friday, Jan. 24, 2025.
Clerks are chosen through a highly competitive process. The court makes the final selection from the nominees of all the schools.
Eligible applicants must electronically submit the application documents in Word or PDF format in the following order to Professor Sánchez, at @email.
- Cover letter/statement of interest, including (a) a description of your academic and other experience in public international law; (b) your background and/or experience in international law, and (c) knowledge of additional languages (if any).
- Virginia ICJ Judicial Fellows Program Application for 2025-26, submitted in Word.
- Curriculum vitae.
- Official Law School transcript.
- Current course list, if a student (also identifying professors).
- At least two letters of reference, one of which should be from a member of the UVA School of Law faculty and one addressing your credentials in the field of international law (letters may be sent via email from referees directly to @email).
- Writing sample from each applicant of no more than 15 typewritten pages of work that has been submitted for publication or other work of publishable quality.
- Candidate profile summary table.
It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure his or her application is complete by the deadline. Because of the ICJ’s submission deadline, we are unable to extend our deadline or wait for incomplete applications. A Law School selection committee will choose the candidates to nominate to the ICJ by Feb. 9. Those applicants will be notified prior to submitting their candidacy. The court’s deadline to receive nominations is Feb. 9, and they are expected to make the final selection decision by April 2025.
Funding
The ICJ does not have funding for the Judicial Fellows Program. One UVA Law graduate will receive a substantial stipend to assist with travel, living expenses and health insurance. The candidate will be responsible for the remainder of his or her expenses beyond the stipend amount. Practical arrangements such as travel, visa, accommodations, and health and other insurance are the responsibility of the candidate.
Miscellaneous
The court accepts no responsibility for medical insurance of participants or costs arising from accident or illness during the program. Nor will the court be liable for compensation claims by third parties in respect of any loss or damage to their property, or death or personal injury, caused by the action or omission of participants during their time in the program.
Participants will be expected to observe all applicable rules, regulations and directions of the court. They will be bound by the obligation towards the court of loyalty, discretion and confidentiality, and will be required to make a declaration to that effect.
Questions
Please direct questions to Professor Camilo Sánchez at @email.
McCoy Pitt, a 2013 alumnus of the University of Virginia School of Law, will clerk at the International Court of Justice in the upcoming year.
Careers
Fellowships
Monroe Leigh Fellowship in International Law
The fellowship provides a total of $10,000 for one or more students to pursue a public international law project of their own choosing during the summer following the first or second year, during the fall and/or spring of the third academic year, or for a postgraduate internship. Application Information
Summer Opportunities
In addition to working summers at firms and other employers that deal with aspects of international law, a number of students find public service positions abroad. The Law School offers $5,000 to $8,000 in grants to help fund a broad array of summer public interest opportunities, which have recently included internships with ANT Lawyers Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague in the Netherlands; and the International Press Institute in Vienna, Austria, among others.
Alumni
More than 650 Virginia Law graduates currently work overseas in 65 countries and every continent. They include the president and CEO of Citibank Japan, the managing director and general counsel of international wealth management at Credit Suisse, U.S. ambassador to Finland, general counsel at Mubadala Petroleum, and the president of the Motion Picture Association EMEA. Additionally, Law School alumni are partners and associates at major global law firms and teach at many universities around the world.
Graduates have received Fulbright fellowships to study abroad, and have worked for government and NGO employers dealing with international law and human rights at home and overseas, including the United Nations, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, the Center for Justice and Accountability, Human Rights Watch, the Center for National Security Studies, the U.S. Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals, the U.S. Army JAG Corps, Global Rights and the U.S. Agency for International Development, among others.
OUR ALUMS LIVE IN Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, jNigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Phillipine Islands, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, The Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
Veronica Dragalin ’11 was appointed Moldova’s chief prosecutor for corruption last August. The University of Virginia School of Law alum, who was born there 37 years ago, left her work as an assistant U.S. attorney to take on the role.
Professor Robert Schütze of Durham University discusses his chapter “Limits to the Union’s ‘Internal Market’ Competence(s): Constitutional Comparisons,” published in the book “The Question of Competence in the European Union.” Professor Georg Kofler of Vienna University of Economics and Business provides commentary. UVA Law professor Ruth Mason and Oxford University professor Tsilly Dagan also discuss the work. This event was held as part of the “Tax Meets Non-Tax” Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs workshop series that builds bridges from tax to other kinds of scholarship.
News
December 3, 2024
Students in a University of Virginia School of Law clinic recently visited the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to learn about diplomatic and legal efforts to support Ethiopia’s recovery from recent conflicts.
October 7, 2024
First-year University of Virginia School of Law student Kate Harrell discusses a report she co-authored documenting Russia’s destruction of cultural heritage in Ukraine.
September 9, 2024
Edwin Fountain ’90, a University of Virginia School of Law alum and grandson of two World War I veterans, has worked for years to establish a national memorial to the “Great War.” His dream will be realized with its unveiling on Friday.
July 17, 2024
New courses offered this fall at the University of Virginia School of Law include Artificial Intelligence and Democracy, International Settlement of Disputes, and Single People and the Law.
June 10, 2024
Jonathan Hamilton ’98 reflects on how his childhood travels and his time as a student at the University of Virginia School of Law sparked a world-spanning career in international arbitration.
April 30, 2024
Students in the University of Virginia School of Law International Human Rights Clinic recently logged over 17,000 miles working on human rights issues in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Salta province in northern Argentina.
April 29, 2024
A paper by University of Virginia School of Law professors Kristen Eichensehr and Cathy Hwang, in which they analyze national security’s reach into corporate transactions, has been recognized as a top 10 corporate law article for 2023.
April 24, 2024
University of Virginia School of Law professor Mitu Gulati has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary society and research center that dates back to the American Revolution.
April 3, 2024
A team of students from the University of Virginia School of Law won awards in this year’s International and European Tax Moot Court competition, among other achievements and recognition for members of the Law School community.
February 29, 2024
The University of Virginia School of Law’s Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition team has advanced to the international rounds, among other achievements and recognition for members of the Law School community.
February 8, 2024
University of Virginia School of Law professor Darryl Brown produced a Clooney Foundation TrialWatch report highlighting violations of international law and due process in the conviction of Azerbaijani opposition leader Tofig Yagublu.
February 2, 2024
Students in the University of Virginia School of Law’s Human Rights Study Project traveled to Kenya to research global health interdependence, rights-based health care and women’s rights.
January 29, 2024
Members of the University of Virginia’s Black Law Students Association journeyed to Cape Town, South Africa, for their annual service trip abroad, volunteering pro bono hours to refugees and mothers while discovering memorable cultural connections.
November 21, 2023
Students from the University of Virginia School of Law’s International Human Rights Law Clinic visited the United Nations in October to observe Third Committee sessions and participate in discussions on human rights issues.
October 9, 2023
Paul B. Stephan, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who has written extensively about the crumbling post-World War II international legal order, weighs in on the legal questions surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas.
October 2, 2023
Members of the University of Virginia School of Law community have recently been singled out for excellence. Among the accolades, Professor Michael Livermore will be in Paris this school year through a fellowship dedicated to addressing looming global challenges.
August 9, 2023
Second-year University of Virginia School of Law student Lillie Stephens reports on her summer fellowship abroad in Costa Rica.
July 17, 2023
Professor Ruth Mason, a tax expert at the University of Virginia School of Law, has been awarded a multiyear fellowship by Germany's prestigious Max Planck Society to research problems at the intersection of taxation and social policy.
July 6, 2023
New courses offered this fall at the University of Virginia School of Law include Climate and Debt, Contemporary Challenges in Military Justice and Empirical Legal Studies.
University of Virginia School of Law professor Paul B. Stephan ’77 says Alexei Navalny’s death will likely have no immediate effect in Russia or for Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Neil H. MacBride ’92, general counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, delivers the keynote address for the conference “Regulating Conflict and Competition: The Economic Levers of National Security.” Professor Kristen Eichensehr opened the conference, and Dean Risa Goluboff introduced MacBride. The event was sponsored by the Law School’s National Security Law Center.
Ongoing Events
Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs
Tax Meets Non-Tax
In an environment of increasing academic specialization, Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs seeks to build bridges across academic disciplines by introducing a new kind of workshop. For each session, a tax scholar will select a non-tax, but law-related, work that is prominent in its own field and explain how the work is relevant to the study of taxation. The author of the work will then respond before we open the session to questions and discussion by workshop attendees.
November 12, 2024
At this year’s “Live From L,” U.S. State Department officials discuss the advisory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Panelists include Legal Adviser Margaret Taylor, Attorney Adviser Niels Von Deuten, and Assistant Legal Advisers Maegan Conklin ’03 and Mary Mitchell, with Professor Ashley Deeks moderating. The event was sponsored by the UVA Law National Security Law Center, American Bar Association International Law Section, American Society of International Law and the U.S. State Department Office of the Legal Adviser.