Jay Butler

Jay Butler focuses his scholarship and teaching on corporate social responsibility, contracts and international law. Butler joined the law faculty at the University of Virginia in 2021 after a faculty appointment at William & Mary Law School. He has been the Kellis E. Parker Teaching Fellow at Columbia Law School and taught as a visitor at Yale Law School, George Washington University Law School and Virginia. He serves as director of the John W. Glynn Jr. Law & Business Program.

Butler has been awarded the American Journal of International Law’s Francis Deák Prize (2021) for his article “The Corporate Keepers of International Law” and the Lieber Prize by the American Society of International Law (2018). He was selected to present at the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum (2019), he won a Law and Public Affairs Fellowship at Princeton University (2018), and his work was honored with a UVA Research Achievement Award (2022). He is currently at work on a book titled “The Business of Nations” (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). 

After graduating from Harvard University with a B.A. in history (magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa inductee), Butler was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a B.A. in jurisprudence from the University of Oxford. He graduated with his J.D. from Yale Law School. Butler served as a law clerk to Judges Hisashi Owada and Giorgio Gaja of the International Court of Justice immediately after law school and worked as a legal adviser to the government of Japan.

Butler is a member of the New York State Bar.