Because Harvard Law School faculty’s expertise and research interests range across jurisdictional and disciplinary borders, so does the curriculum. HLS is leading the way with innovative thinking about how law might best be practiced and taught in a world linked by converging and competing legal systems, technology, and a relative ease of scholarly exchange.
The Harvard Law School faculty can no longer be easily divided into domestic and international law specialists. Faculty experts on U.S. law increasingly bring international and comparative law into their work, in the process transforming core classes and legal thought, while those who specialize in international legal studies bring this expertise to bear on U.S. law and other disciplines.
The work of Harvard Law School’s faculty is redefining international scholarship. Through their research, teaching, backgrounds, public service, and collaborations with scholars around the world, they embody an awareness of and engagement with the world.
These HLS professors and lecturers, among others, regularly teach courses, seminars and reading groups, lead programs and projects, and conduct research on international, comparative and foreign law.
William P. Alford
Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law
Director, East Asian Legal Studies
Program Chair, Harvard Law School Project on Disability
Special Advisor for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies
Professor Alford is a scholar of Chinese law and legal history, and is also deeply immersed in research and pro bono activity concerning disability, with China one principal work. He is the co-author of the recent three-volume work “An Oral History of the Special Olympics in China” (2020), “Taiwan and International Human Rights” (2019), and “Prospects for the Profession in China” (2010), among other books.
Sabrineh Ardalan
Clinical Professor
Director, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program
Professor Ardalan engages in research and writing on a range of topics involving international and comparative refugee law, including violations of economic, social, and cultural rights and the refugee definition; Central American gangs and religious persecution; and interdisciplinary collaboration in asylum representation. She is active in developing law student exchanges and trainings with refugee law clinics in other countries, including Morocco, Israel, and Australia.
Yochai Benkler
Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies
Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Professor Benkler’s work has ranged from the role of information commons and decentralized collaboration to innovation, information production, and freedom in the networked economy and society. His books include “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” (2006).
Gabriella Blum
Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
Director, Program on International Law and Armed Conflict
Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies
Professor Blum specializes in public international law, international negotiations, the law of armed conflict, and counterterrorism. She is the author of “Islands of Agreement: Managing Enduring Armed Rivalries” (2007), “Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists,” co-authored with Philip Heymann and recipient of the Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize (2010), and of “The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones–Confronting a New Age of Threat,” co-authored with Benjamin Wittes and recipient of the Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize (2015), as well as of journal articles in the fields of public international law and the law and morality of war.
I. Glenn Cohen
James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics
Deputy Dean
Professor Cohen teaches and writes on health law and the intersection of bioethics and the law. He is the author of “Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law and Ethics” (2014), and has written, edited or co-edited eight additional books. His award-winning work has appeared in leading legal, medical, bioethics, scientific and public health journals, as well as op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Rebecca Richman Cohen
Lecturer on Law
Ms. Cohen directed and produced “WAR DON DON,” a film about the war crimes trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Her new film, “Weed & Wine,” interweaves stories of vinters in France with cannabis farmers in the U.S., looking at the regulatory regimes and cultural influences in both industries.
Anna Crowe
Lecturer on Law
Assistant Director, International Human Rights Clinic
Ms. Crowe’s work focuses on refugee rights, particularly refugee documentation, humanitarian disarmament, and the right to privacy.
Mihir A. Desai
Professor of Law
Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School
Professor Desai writes about tax policy in a globalized economy and on the intersection of taxation, corporate governance, and multinational firms’ internal capital markets, and has testified before Congress regarding corporate and international taxation.
Christine Desan
Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law
Professor Desan’s work focuses on the international monetary system, the constitutional law of money, constitutional history, political economy, and legal theory. She is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on the Study of Capitalism and the author of “Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism” (2014).
Bonnie Docherty
Lecturer on Law
Associate Director of Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection, International Human Rights Clinic
Ms. Docherty is a leading lawyer, field researcher and scholar in the field of humanitarian disarmament. She works to strengthen international law on cluster munitions, incendiary weapons, and fully autonomous weapons (“killer robots”). Ms. Docherty successfully advocated for specific provisions in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and provided legal advice to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the civil society coalition that received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Charles Donahue
Paul A. Freund Professor of Law
Professor Donahue focuses on European legal history, with particular emphasis on the medieval and early modern periods. His recent projects include working on the 14th-century volume of the new “Oxford History of the Laws of England.”
Einer Elhauge
Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Law
Professor Elhauge teaches a gamut of courses ranging from Antitrust, Contracts, Corporations, Legislation, and Health Care Law. He is an author of numerous books or articles on range of topics even broader than he teaches, including antitrust, contracts, corporate law, patents, public law, and health law policy. He was the founding faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics.
Susan Farbstein
Clinical Professor of Law
Co-Director, International Human Rights Clinic
Professor Farbstein is involved in range of human rights projects around the globe. She serves as co-counsel in cases involving extrajudicial killings in Bolivia and the torture and killing of non-violent activists in Nigeria, and a suit against major multinational corporations for aiding and abetting human rights violations committed by the apartheid state in South Africa, and has authored numerous amicus curiae briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on legal questions ranging from corporate accountability for human rights abuse to the immunity of former foreign government officials.
Noah Feldman
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Professor Feldman specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. He has written several books, including “The Arab Winter: A Tragedy” (Princeton University Press, 2020) and “Cool War: The Future of Global Competition” (Random House, 2013).
William Fisher
WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law
Faculty Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Professor Fisher focuses on international access to lifesaving drugs for underserved populations. Among other books, he has written, with Talha Syed S.J.D. ’04, “Infection: The Health Crisis in the Developing World and What We Should Do About It” (Stanford University Press, 2018).
Idriss Fofana
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Fofana writes and teaches in the areas of international law, comparative law, legal history, and law and colonialism. His research examines the history of international law and other forms of inter-polity order in Africa and Asia since the 1600s.
Tyler Giannini
Clinical Professor of Law
Professor Giannini’s international clinical work has included supporting accountability, education and assembly rights, and women’s leadership in Myanmar; pursuing accountability in U.S. Supreme Court against companies complicit in apartheid-era crimes in South Africa; similar litigation against the former president and defense minister of Bolivia for their involvement in a massacre in 2003; and advocacy for survivors of sexual violence around a mine in Papua New Guinea.
Jack Landman Goldsmith
Learned Hand Professor of Law
Professor Goldsmith writes frequently about presidential power, terrorism, national security, international law, and internet law. His books include “Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11” (2012) and “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration” (2007).
Janet Halley
Professor of Law
Professor Halley specializes in comparative family law, discrimination, law and literary theory, law and social theory, legal theory, and the regulation of sexuality. She has written about rape in the international law governing armed conflict, the theory and history of family law, social movements and the law, and the law of human trafficking, among other topics.
Howell E. Jackson
James S. Reid, Jr. Professor of Law
Professor Howell Jackson’s research interests include financial regulation, consumer protection, international finance, and federal budget policy. He has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Professor Jackson is the author of U.S. Financial Regulation in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis in “Financial Regulation: A Transatlantic Perspective” (2015) and, with Jeffery Y. Zhang, Private and Public Enforcement in Securities Regulation in “The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Law and Governance” (2015).
Vicki C. Jackson
Laurence H. Tribe Professor of Constitutional Law
Professor Vicki Jackson participates in international scholarly projects regarding elected representatives in a democracy, gender equality and the interaction of international and domestic law, and the co-evolution of the constitutionalization of international law and the internationalization of constitutional law. She is the author of “Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era” (2010) and the co-author of recent editions of “Comparative Constitutional Law,” a course book in the field.
Elizabeth Papp Kamali
Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law
Deputy Dean
Professor Kamali’s research has examined doubt and proof in 13th and 14th-century English law, the assumptions underlying England’s adoption of trial by jury for crime in the 13th century, and the influence of Roman and canon law on the early development of common law. She recently published “Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England” with the Studies in Legal History series at Cambridge University Press (2019).
David W. Kennedy
Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law
Director, Institute for Global Law and Policy
Professor Kennedy teaches international law, international economic policy, legal theory, law and development, and European law, and has written numerous articles on international law and global governance. He recently published “A World of Struggle: How Power, Law and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy” (2016).
Reinier H. Kraakman
Ezra Ripley Thayer Professor of Law
Professor Kraakman researches foreign direct investment by firms located in emerging economies, and contributed to the third edition of “The Anatomy of Corporate Law” (2017) which looks at seven jurisdictions: United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and Brazil.
Adriaan Lanni
Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law
Professor Lanni’s research focuses on ancient law and society and modern criminal justice reform Her books include “Law and Order in Ancient Rome” (2016) and “Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens” (2006).
Martha Minow
300th Anniversary University Professor
Professor Minow, who served as Dean of Harvard Law School from 2009-2017, published “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark” (Oxford, 2010), examining how this decision has shaped education policy and practice both in the U.S. and abroad, and co-edited, with Professor Alex Whiting and Cora True-Frost LL.M. ‘06, “The First Global Prosecutor: Promise and Constraints” (2015). Her work on human rights and transitional societies includes service on the International Independent Commission on Kosovo and the UNHCR project Imagine Co-Existence.
Naz Modirzadeh
Professor of Practice
Founding Director, Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (PILAC)
Professor Modirzadeh advises and briefs international humanitarian organizations, UN agencies, and governments on issues related to international humanitarian law, human rights, and counterterrorism regulations relating to humanitarian assistance. Her scholarship and research focus on intersections between the fields of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and Islamic law. She is the founding director of the Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, which supports research on critical challenges in these fields and engages with states, Intergovernmental organizations, the UN system, and NGOs.
Gerald Neuman
J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law
Director, Human Rights Program
Professor Neuman’s current research focuses on international human rights bodies, transnational dimensions of constitutionalism, and rights of foreign nationals. He recently edited and contributed several chapters to “Human Rights in a Time of Populism: Challenges and Responses” (2020). From 2011 to 2014, Professor Neuman was a member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the treaty body that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Ruth Okediji
Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law
Co-Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Professor Okediji’s scholarship focuses on the international regulatory environment for knowledge goods, innovation policy and global knowledge governance. She has served as a policy advisor to many inter-governmental organizations, regional economic communities and national governments on the formulation of copyright and patent policies, and on institutional design choices related to IP administration.
Intisar Rabb
Professor of Law
Director, Program in Islamic Law
Professor of History, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Professor Rabb has written on Islamic law in historical and modern contexts, Islamic constitutionalism, Islamic legal maxims, and on the early history of the Qur’an text. As director of the Program in Islamic Law, she has launched SHARIAsource, an online global database that will house primary sources on, and analysis about, Islamic law.
J. Mark Ramseyer
Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies
Professor Ramseyer teaches and researches Japanese law, primarily from a law and economics perspective. He has taught at several Japanese universities and published a book on Japanese tort litigation, “Second-Best Justice: The Virtues of Japanese Private Law” (2015).
Mark Roe
David Berg Professor of Law
Professor Roe focuses on worldwide problems in business bankruptcy, corporate law, and financial regulation. Two of his recent articles have focused on sustainable corporate governance initiatives in Europe and how bank taxation impedes or fosters financial safety in the U.S. and Europe.
Joseph William Singer
Bussey Professor of Law
Professor Singer teaches and writes about property law, conflict of laws, and federal Indian law. He also writes about legal theory with an emphasis on moral and political philosophy. He is an executive editor of “Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law” (updated in 2019), and has written a casebook and a treatise on property law, as well as “No Freedom Without Regulation: The Hidden Lesson of the Subprime Crisis” (2015), “Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property” (2000), and “The Edges of the Field: Lessons on the Obligations of Ownership” (2000).
Michael Stein
Visiting Professor of Law
Co-founder and Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability
Professor Stein participated in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, actively consults with international governments on their disability laws and policies, and advises a number of United Nations bodies. He and the Harvard Law School Project on Disability continue to train and support the work of self-advocates with intellectual disabilities and their families and supporters in Bangladesh, China, and Israel.
Matthew Stephenson
Eli Goldstein Professor of Law
Professor Stephenson specializes in the global issues of anticorruption law, legislation, administrative law, and the application of political economy to public institutional design. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Global Anticorruption Blog, which features student analyses of the problem of corruption around the world.
Kristen Stilt
Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Animal Law & Policy Program
Director, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World
Professor Stilt teaches and conducts research on issue in Islamic law and society in both historical and contemporary contexts, and on animal law and in the intersection of animal law and religion and culture. She is the author of “Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion, and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt” (2011) and many journal articles.
Guhan Subramanian
Joseph H. Flom Professor of Law and Business
Chair, Program on Negotiation
H. Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law, Harvard Business School
Professor Subramanian’s research explores topics in global corporate governance, corporate law, and negotiations. He chairs the Program on Negotiation. Professor Subramanian’s book “Dealmaking” (2011; second edition 2020) synthesizes the findings from his research and teaching from the past two decades, and has been translated into Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. He is also a co-author of “Commentaries and Cases on the Law of Business Organization” (4th edition 2012), a leading textbook in the field of corporate law.
Daniel Tarullo
Nomura Professor of International Financial Regulatory Practice
Professor Tarullo’s areas of research interest include financial institutions, international economic law, and administrative law. He was a member of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee from 2009 to 2017, and was Federal Reserve’s representative to the international Financial Stability Board, including four years as chair of its Committee on Supervision and Regulation. Earlier, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business affairs, Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy, and as President Clinton’s personal representative to the G7 group of industrialized nations.
Philip Torrey
Lecturer on Law
Managing Attorney, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, and Supervising Attorney, Harvard Immigration Project
Mr. Torrey supervises the Crimmigration Clinic which specializes in the intersection of criminal law and immigration law. In the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, he represents clients seeking asylum and other forms of humanitarian immigration relief. His research focuses on the crime-based grounds of removal and immigration detention, including the private prison industry, and the immigration system’s mandatory detention regime.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Roscoe Pound Professor of Law
Professor Unger’s international work focuses on legal, social, political, and economic theory. He has twice (2007 and 2015) served as the Brazilian Minister of Strategic Affairs. Professor Unger’s recent books include “The Universal History of Legal Thought” (2021) and “The Knowledge Economy” (2019).
Lucie White
Louis A. Horvitz Professor of Law
Professor White has worked for more than a decade on the issue of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2002 she has led Making Rights Real: The Ghana Project, a seminar and clinic in which students work closely with Ghanaian organizations that focus on the human rights dimensions of Ghana’s health policies and practices. Her publications include “Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Policy” (2011), written with Jeremy Perelman S.J.D. ’11.
David Wilkins
Lester Kissel Professor of Law
Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession
Director, Center on the Legal Profession
Professor Wilkins has written over 80 articles on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press and is the co-author of one of the leading casebooks in the field. His current scholarly work includes the Project on Globalization, Lawyers and Emerging Economies, a research collaborative studying how globalization is reshaping the legal services market in Asia, Africa, and Latin America’s emerging economies, and how this process is in turn reshaping the global legal services market, global governance, and the rule of law.
Mark Wu
Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law
Professor Wu specializes in international economic and trade law. He serves in the Biden-Harris administration as senior advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative. With the active support of a team of students, he co-organized the 20th anniversary conference of the World Trade Organization in the United States.
Jonathan Zittrain
George Bemis Professor of International Law
Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources
Faculty Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society
Professor of Computer Science, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Professor, Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government
Professor Zittrain’s research interests include the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence; the control of digital property; the regulation of cryptography; new privacy frameworks for loyalty to users of online services; the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture; and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.