International and Comparative - Faculty Activities

The law school's faculty includes a number of international and comparative law specialists.  Click here for recent updates on international and comparative faculty activities.

Kathleen Clark, Professor of Law
Kathleen Clark is an expert on national security law, legal ethics, and anti-corruption measures. She has served as an ethics consultant for the United Nations Development Program and the ABA’s Europe and Eurasia Program (CEELI), and has led ethics workshops in Europe, Africa and South America. A member of the American Law Institute, Clark is past chair of the National Security Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and has served on the board of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Gerrit De Geest, Professor of Law
Gerrit De Geest specializes in comparative law and in law and economics. Before joining the law faculty in 2007, he was a professor of law and economics at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Past president of the European Association of Law and Economics, he is a member of the European Group on an Integrated Contract Law and of the Economic Impact Group of the Common Principles of European Contract Law. He is co-editor of the Review of Law and Economics and consultant editor of the European Review of Contract Law. He has published widely in the fields of economic analysis of contract law, tort law, and comparative law.

John N. Drobak, George Alexander Madill Professor of Law, Professor of Economics & Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
John Drobak is a pioneer in interdisciplinary study, ranging from his leadership role with the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies to the course he co-teaches with Nobel Laureate (Economics), Douglass North, to his many joint programs with other departments on campus. He has served as a consultant to the governments of Czechoslovakia and the Republic of Georgia; Secretary and Executive Committee member for the Society for New Institutional Economics; and as a fifteen-year member of the M.B.A faculty for the U.S. Business School in Prague. His recent scholarship includes extensive work on privatization and democratization.

Frances H. Foster, Edward T. Foote, II Professor of Law
Frances Foster specializes in the legal systems of socialist and former socialist countries and in trusts and estates. In early, ground-breaking work, she compared approaches to inheritance in the United States and China, based on her original translations of Chinese inheritance cases. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Comparative Law and an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

John Owen Haley, Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law
John Haley is one of the nation's outstanding international and comparative law scholars and is widely credited with having popularized Japanese legal studies. He has been teaching for more than 30 years at law schools in the U.S. and abroad.  His numerous scholarly works span issues ranging from international trade policy and comparative law to Japanese land-use law, Japanese and East Asian business transactions, and Japanese law and contemporary society. A member of the American Law Institute, he is the author or editor of nine books or monographs, including several leading books in Japanese and comparative law topics. For several years, he directed the law school’s Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies, organizing conferences on topics ranging from corporate governance to U.S.-China business relationships. Haley serves on the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee of the Society for Japanese Studies and the Executive Committee for the American Society of Comparative Law.

Stephen H. Legomsky, John S. Lehmann University Professor
Stephen Legomsky is one of the world’s leading experts in immigration and refugee law and policy. A member of the American Law Institute, he has chaired the Immigration Law Section of the AALS and the Refugee Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association. He has testified before Congress and been a consultant to several U.S. Presidential administrations, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the immigration ministers of Russia and Ukraine, and several foreign governments. He has held lecturing or research appointments abroad in Austria, Australia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Suriname, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. His immigration law casebook has been the required text at 157 law schools, and he has had two books published by Oxford University Press.

Charles R. McManis, Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law, Director, Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program & Director, Center for Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Charles McManis is an internationally recognized expert in intellectual property law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and has served as a consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organization. A member of the International Association of Teachers and Researchers of Intellectual Property, he has taught, lectured, or researched throughout the United States and in Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. In 2007, he was appointed an ambassador to Korea University as part of the university’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

Carl Minzner, Associate Professor of Law
Carl Minzner specializes in Chinese law and policy. Before joining the law faculty in 2007, he served as senior counsel to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He also served as a Yale-China Legal Education fellow at the Xibei Institute of Politics and Law in Xi’an. His published works include articles on citizen petitioning institutions in China and reforms to the regulations governing Chinese civil society organizations.

A. Peter Mutharika, Professor of Law
Peter Mutharika is an expert on international economic law, international law, and comparative constitutional law. He serves as a foreign policy adviser to the government of Malawi, participated in the U.N. World Summit, and was a Malawi delegate to the United Nations General Assembly 60th Session. He is also a member of the Panel of Arbitrators and Panel of Conciliators for the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He has participated in and presented a paper at the Malawi Constitutional Review Conference. He has taught or conducted research in Africa, Canada, Europe, and the United States.

Stanley L. Paulson, William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law & Professor of Philosophy
Stanley L. Paulson specializes in European legal philosophy and legal theory. A prolific author, he is a renowned authority on the work of legal philosopher and constitutional theorist, Hans Kelsen (1881-1973). He delivered the academic keynote address at a session honoring Kelsen on the occasion of his 125th birthday to the Upper House of the Austrian Federal Parliament. A recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Research Prize for scholars in the humanities, Paulson has held a number of post-doctoral fellowships in the United States and abroad. He received honorary doctorates from the Faculty of Law at the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and the Faculty of Law at the University of Kiel (Germany).

Michael Peil, Associate Dean for International Programs
Michael Peil coordinates the international programs of the law school, including student and faculty exchanges, conferences, summer internships and study-abroad opportunities. Previously, he served for five years as Executive Director of the International Law Students Association and practiced law in Chicago. He has lectured in international law in Armenia, under the aegis of the ABA’s Europe and Eurasia Program (CEELI).  He serves on the Board of Directors for the World Affairs Council of St. Louis. He teaches European Union Law and has taught at the law school’s Summer Institute for Global Justice in Utrecht.

Adam H. Rosenzweig, Associate Professor of Law
Adam Rosenzweig concentrates his research and teaching in the area of tax law and policy, including international taxation and international business transactions. Before joining the Washington University faculty in 2007, he was a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University. He also was in private practice in New York, where he focused on federal income tax law and specialized in the areas of private equity, hedge funds, equity derivatives, and cross-border capital markets.
 
Leila Nadya Sadat, Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law & Director, Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies
A leading authority in international criminal law and human rights, Leila Sadat is a prolific scholar who is particularly well known for her expertise on the International Criminal Court. She chaired the International Law Association committee on the ICC and was an NGO delegate to the U.N. Preparatory Committee and to the diplomatic conference in Rome at which the Court was established. From 2001 to 2003, she served on the nine-member U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. She founded and continues to teach in the law school’s Summer Institute for Global Justice. A member of the American Law Institute, she is the co-author of a leading international criminal law casebook and an award-winning monograph on the ICC. She is a Vice-President and Executive Committee Member of the International Law Association, Secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law, Vice-President of the association International de Droit Pénal, a former Executive Council member of the American Society of International Law, and a member of the French Société de législation Comparée.  She previously practiced international business law in Paris; and clerked for both of France’s Supreme Courts, the Cour de Cassation and the Conseil d’Etat.

Gilbert Sison, Adjunct Professor of Law
Gilbert Sison practices law with the St. Louis firm of Rosenblum, Schwartz, Rogers & Glass, PC. Prior to that, he practiced at Bryan Cave, LLP, and Thompson Coburn, LLP. He serves as the coach of the law school’s Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition team and teaches a course in international courts and tribunals. In his seven years as coach, the law school has won three U.S. Regional Championships and has also won a number of written and oral awards.

Melissa Waters, Professor of Law
Melissa Waters is an expert in several areas of international and comparative law, including foreign relations law, international human rights law, international criminal law, and complex civil litigation.  Her scholarship focuses on the incorporation of international law into domestic legal regimes, and in particular on the role of transnational judicial dialogue in developing international legal norms and in transforming U.S. and other domestic courts into key mediators between domestic and international law.  Professor Waters serves as the university's ambassador to Utrecht University (Netherlands) under the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

In addition, members of our faculty routinely lecture and teach abroad and incorporate international or comparative law into their courses.

Dorsey D. Ellis, Jr., William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law
Dorsey D. Ellis, Jr. served as dean of the School of Law for more than a decade. His teaching and scholarship focus on the areas of torts and antitrust. In recent years, he has taught in England, Japan, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, has published on U.S. antitrust law throughout the world, and has taught Comparative Competition Law in the Law School’s Summer Institute for Global Justice. He also participated in the 2004 APEC Competition Policy Conference in Tokyo.

Leigh Greenhaw, Senior Lecturer in Law
Leigh Hunt Greenhaw teaches the law school’s “Introduction to U.S. Law,” an intensive, two-semester course for foreign Masters and exchange students. She brings varied U.S. experience as a judicial clerk, legal services lawyer, civil litigator in private practice, legal writing instructor and constitutional law professor to bear, teaching distinctive aspects of U.S. legal method through the written resolution of legal problems. An expert in religion and the U.S. Constitution, she has published and taught comparative religious liberty law.

Steven Gunn, Associate Professor of Law & Director of American Indian Law & Economic Development Program
An expert in American Indian law, Steven Gunn has represented American Indian tribes in actions to protect their land, resources, rights, and cultural heritage, including a recent case representing the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He has worked with students to coordinate a symposium on contemporary and comparative perspectives on the rights of indigenous peoples. Gunn directs the American Indian Law and Economic Development Externship, in which students spend a summer assisting with legal work and living on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He has served as chair of the AALS Section on Indian Nations and Indigenous Peoples and vice chair for public service of the ABA Native American Resources Committee.

Peter A. Joy, Professor of Law & Director, Criminal Justice Clinic
Peter Joy is well known for his work in clinical legal education, legal ethics, and trial practice. The inaugural director of the School of Law’s Trial & Advocacy Program, he also teaches a Comparative Legal Ethics Seminar.  He serves on the AALS Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure and on the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s Clinic and Skills Training Committee, and he is past chair of the AALS Clinical Education Section and is past president of the Clinical Legal Education Association. He is on the Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review, and he is a Contributing Editor to Criminal Justice, a quarterly publication of the ABA.  Professor Joy is active in developing clinical legal education in Japan, publishing and teaching extensively on the subject, and has lectured in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, and South Africa on clinical education and legal ethics topics.

Michael H. Koby, Director of the Trial & Advocacy Program, Associate Director of Legal Writing, and Senior Lecturer in Law
Michael Koby teaches the law school’s “Introduction to U.S. Law,” an intensive, two-semester course for foreign Masters and exchange students. He has lectured in Japan and Spain on the distinctive aspects of U.S. law and legal methodology, and has lectured at the International Law Institute in Washington, D.C., to international and foreign procurement practitioners on the characteristics of common-law systems.

D. Bruce La Pierre, Professor of Law
Bruce La Pierre is an expert in school desegregation, election law, and federalism issues, and has established an Appellate Clinic for law school students. He has taught abroad at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Portugal, the University of Navarra in Spain, and at the Law School’s Summer Institute for Global Justice. He is a frequent lecturer at Aoyama Gakuin University (Japan).  He has also participated in the Jean Monnet Chair International Summer Seminar in Rome.

C.J. Larkin, Administrative Director of the ADR Program and Lecturer in Law
C.J. Larkin has an extensive background as a public defender, appellate attorney, and family lawyer. Under her leadership, the ADR Program has received a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of State to establish exchanges between the Washington University and Kathmandu law schools and between Washington University and two civil-society NGOs in Nepal. Larkin provided mediation training to a Nepali delegation who visited the law school and met with ADR providers in the community in spring 2006. She and other law school representatives then made an exchange visit to Nepal in summer 2006. Along with the International Institute in St. Louis, Larkin received an ASC Foundation grant to train and mentor mediators within the immigrant-refugee communities and to develop an Ethnic Mediation Council in St. Louis.

Ronald M. Levin, Henry Hitchcock Professor of Law
Ronald Levin is a nationally known administrative law scholar who has coauthored a casebook and written many articles in that field. He is past chair of the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and of both the AALS Sections on Administrative Law and on Legislation. He has lectured in Japan and served as a consultant to the Supreme Court of Indonesia. Currently he is a reporter on judicial review for the ABA’s Project on the Administrative Law of the European Union.

Jo Ellen D. Lewis, Director, Legal Practice Program & Senior Lecturer in Law
Jo Ellen Lewis has served several times as a visiting professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, teaching courses ranging from real estate transactions to introductions to the American judicial system. She has also taught a Japanese graduate-level law course on, among other topics, an analysis of the First Amendment in the context of a recent federal court case.

Maxine Lipeles, Director, Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic
Maxine Lipeles directs the law school’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic, which offers pro bono legal and technical support to local environmental and community organizations.  In addition to a number of environmental law and clinical courses, she teaches Global Warming & The Law.  She is also a professor in the university’s School of Engineering & Applied Science.

Kimberly Jade Norwood, Professor of Law & Associate Professor of African and African American Studies
Kimberly Norwood has focused her research on tort reform, venue shopping, and racial identity. Among her international work, she helped establish an externship program for law students in Ghana and Kenya, and has lectured in Japan on the American tort law system.

Karen L. Tokarz, Professor of Law and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Director, Clinical Education Program & Director, Alternative Dispute Resolution Program
Instrumental in building the School of Law's top-ranked clinical legal education program, Karen Tokarz is a leader in both national and international clinical education, as well as an expert in civil rights mediation and employment discrimination law. She is past chair of the AALS Clinical Education Section and is past President of the Clinical Legal Education Association. She has established student and faculty exchanges in Nepal and throughout Africa and spearheads the law school’s summer service initiatives in South Africa and throughout Africa.