Faculty scholarship is the backbone of Columbia Law School's predominance in comparative and international law. Professors publish in leading journals and the popular press. In our more than 70 class offerings, ideas are passed on to students who will provide leadership in international legal practice and policymaking in the decades ahead.

Columbia's history in international law began three years after the School's founding in 1858, when Professor Francis Lieber delivered a series of lectures titled "The Laws and Usages of War." These talks later became the basis for the Geneva Conventions. In Lieber's footsteps came scholars such as John Bassett Moore, as well as James Brown Scott, who played a key role in the founding of the ASIL in 1906. Later, Professors Louis Henkin and Oscar Schachter pioneered new areas of international law, while current faculty members engage in cutting-edge global research with complexities Lieber-wounded in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815-could have scarcely imagined.

Listed below is the work of some of our faculty:

Jose E. Alvarez
The Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy
During his just-completed two-year term as ASIL president, Jose Alvarez challenged members to think hard about the relevance of international law in a series of columns, as well as in a number of books with subjects ranging from international criminal law to the World Trade Organization. Alvarez's writings on foreign direct investment (FDI), include a forthcoming co-edited book, The Future of International Law and Policy, essays in two other books, Coherence and Consistency in International Investment Law and Global Players in Emerging Markets (all being co-edited by colleague Karl Sauvant, director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment); and an article, "The Argentine Crisis and Foreign Investors: A Glimpse into the Heart of the Investment Regime" which will launch the Vale Center's new Yearbook of International Investment Law & Policy (Oxford University Press) in 2009.

George A. Bermann
The Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law and the Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law
George Bermann is a renowned leader in several areas of law, evidenced by his current roles as chief reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement Third (the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration) and his presidency of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Paris. He also serves as editor of the ABA-sponsored Administrative Law of the European Union, a multi-volume set on rulemaking, adjudication, judicial review, transparency, and oversight. With Columbia colleague Petros Mavroidis he is co-editor of a number of books on WTO law.

Philip C. Bobbitt
The Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence
One of the nation's leading constitutional theorists, Philip Bobbitt is a highly-regarded expert in constitutional law and international security. His most recent book, Terror and Consent, garnered highly positive media attention when national security issues became part of the national debate this past election year. He has served in the State Department and on the National Security Council, as well as on the editorial board of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism. His essays appear in the Independent and the New York Times.

Christina Duffy Burnett
Associate Professor of Law
Legal historian Christina Duffy Burnett examines the constitutional and international legal history of American empire, a topic that sheds light on issues of fundamental importance in the American polity, such as federalism, citizenship, and nationhood. Her recent articles include "'They Say I Am Not an American': The Noncitizen National and the Law of American Empire" in the Virginia Journal of International Law and the forthcoming "Convenient Constitution? Extraterritoriality after Boumediene" in the Columbia Law Review.

Sarah H. Cleveland
Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights
Sarah Cleveland is a noted expert in the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, international law in domestic law and the interface between human rights and international trade. She co-directs the Law School's Human Rights Institute (HRI) and is a co-author of the newly revised and forthcoming casebook, Human Rights (with Louis Henkin, et al.). Her current scholarship focuses on the relationship between the U.S. Constitution and international law. Her recent activities include participation in an amici curiae brief on behalf of petitioners in Boumediene v. Bush and serving as co-coordinator of HRI's Detention without Trial Working Group.

Lori Fisler Damrosch
The Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization
Lori Damrosch, who serves as co-editor of the American Journal of International Law, brings a wide variety of experience to her scholarship, including a position at the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser and her work on cases before international arbitral tribunals (including the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal) at Sullivan & Cromwell. She is author of the authoritative International Law: Cases and Materials and her current scholarship delves into how constitutional democracies make war and peace decisions.

Benjamin L. Liebman
Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies
Benjamin Liebman's broad expertise in Chinese law is evidenced by recent articles with Columbia colleagues that include "Reputational Sanctions in China's Security Markets" (with Curtis Milhaupt) in the Columbia Law Review and "Chinese Network Justice" (with Timothy Wu) in the Chicago Journal of International Law. He also directs the Center for Chinese Legal Studies, a focal point for curricular, extracurricular, and exchange activities that attract students and scholars from all over the world.

Petros C. Mavroidis
The Edwin B. Parker Professor of Foreign & Comparative Law
Petros Mavroidis is an expert on the legal framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in the past few years has written and edited six books on varying aspects of WTO law. In addition to scholarship, he is the co-creator of novel courses that include Columbia's WTO Seminar, in which students write reaction papers based on lectures by visiting economists, political scientists, and lawyers.

Katharina Pistor
Professor of Law
Katharina Pistor's work focuses on the organization of firms and financial markets across the country and globally. She has published a recent book with colleague Curtis Milhaupt called Law & Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development around the World, which explores firm level governance across six countries. Her most recent research project focuses on "Global Network Finance." This area of law probes the increasingly dense ties of equity linking major financial intermediaries such as large banks and wealth funds, as well as how these vital connections can help nations respond to marketplace uncertainties.