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.

A. E. Dick Howard

A. E. Dick Howard teaches courses in comparative constitutionalism. He was the chief architect of the Constitution of Virginia. He has compared notes with drafters of constitutions in various foreign countries, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Brazil, the Philippines, Hong Kong, South Africa and Malawi. Howard has written extensively on Anglo-American constitutional history, especially the legacy of Magna Carta, and on constitutional developments in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe.

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 to 2018 was a co-ordinating reporter of the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States.  During 1993-1998 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/Emeritus Faculty

• Brian J. Bill
• Kristin Clarens
• Richard N. Dean
• Neil Duxbury
• Marie Goré
• Nestor Gounaris
• Malik Laazouzi
• Xinh "Sing" T. Luu
• Mark Mendelsohn
• Kenneth Starling
• Abraham Sutherland
• Howard Wachtel

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.

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 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
Emerging Markets: Principles and Practice
International Business Negotiation
International Banking Transactions
International Tax
International Investment Arbitration

International Litigation and Dispute Resolution

Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law

2L
Conflict of Laws
International Arbitration
Globalization and Private Dispute Resolution (alongside other fundamental litigation and arbitration courses: Evidence, Federal Courts, Remedies, etc.)

3L
International Investment Arbitration
International Civil Litigation

International Human Rights

Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law

2L
International Human Rights Law
Law of Armed Conflict
Building 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
International Human Rights Law Clinic
Human Rights Study Project
Immigration Law Clinic

National Security and Use of Force

Spring 1L or Fall 2L
International Law

2L
National Security Law
Law of Armed Conflict
International Law and the Use of Force

3L
Unconventional Warfare
War and Peace: New Thinking about the Causes of War and War Avoidance
World War I
Terrorism, Human Rights and Rule of Law: Comparative Approach
Legal and Policy Issues of the Indochina War

All International Law Courses and Seminars

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

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 2023 and runs to June/July 2024. 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 2023), as well as UVA Law J.D., LL.M. and S.J.D. graduates of the classes of 2019-22. 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: Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2023.

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 Cindy Derrick, @email.

1. 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).
2. Virginia ICJ Judicial Fellows Program Application for 2023-24, submitted in Word.
3. Curriculum vitae.
4. Official Law School transcript.
5. Current course list, if a student (also identifying professors).
6. 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 Cindy Derrick, @email.
7. 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.

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 Sunday, Feb. 14. Those applicants will be notified prior to submitting their candidacy. The court’s deadline to receive nominations is Feb. 14, and they are expected to make the final selection decision within several months.

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.

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 student-run Public Interest Law Association offers $3,750 to $6,500 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. More on Human Rights Program Fellowships

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.