Ruti G. Teitel

Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law
Chair, Global Law and Justice Colloquium
Associate Director, Center for International Law
Visiting Professor, London School of Economics, Global Governance
Founding Co-Chair, American Society of International Law, Interest Group on Transitional Justice and Rule of Law
Fall 2007, Schell Fellow, Yale Law School
Spring 2008, Visiting Professor, Fordham Law School
Columbia University, Politics Department

An internationally recognized authority on transnational law, comparative law, international human rights, transitional justice, and comparative constitutional law, Ruti G. Teitel is the first Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School. Her path-breaking book, Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000), examines the 20th century transitions to democracy in many countries.

Born in Argentina, Professor Teitel’s interest in the topic grew out of the dilemmas confronting that society in the transition out of junta rule. Her book explores the recurring question of how new regimes should respond to past repression, and argues against the prevailing view favoring punishment, while contending that the law still plays a profound role in periods of radical change in establishing a new sense of legitimacy and rule of law.

Her extensive body of scholarly writing on comparative law, human rights, and constitutionalism encompasses articles published in some of the country’s most prestigious legal journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Columbia Human Rights Law Review, most recently, “Militating Democracy: Comparative Constitutional Perspectives” in the Michigan Journal of International Law, “The Law and Politics of Contemporary Transitional Justice” and “Humanity’s Law: Rule of Law for the New Global Politics,” both in the Cornell International Law Journal, as well as “Comparative Constitutionalism in a Global Age” in the Harvard Law Review. In addition, she has contributed dozens of book chapters to published volumes relating to law and politics, including “The Transitional Apology” in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford University Press, 2006), “Transitional Rule of Law” in Rethinking the Rule of Law After Communism (CEU Press, 2005), “Empire’s Law: Foreign Relations by Presidential Fiat,” in Sept. 11 In History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003), and “Transitional Justice as Liberal Narrative” in Transnational Legal Processes: Globalisation and Power Disparities (Butterworths 2002). She also writes on human rights issues for a broader audience, having published in The New York Times, Legal Affairs, Findlaw.com. and Project Syndicate.

A cum laude graduate of Georgetown University, Professor Teitel received her J.D. from Cornell Law School and was a Senior Fellow at the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. She has taught at Yale and Tel Aviv Law Schools and Columbia University’s SIPA, and the University of Siena.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Steering Committees of Human Rights Watch Europe/Central Asia, as well as its Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Program. In 1993, she received a grant from the United States Institute of Peace. Most recently, she is a co-recipient of a Mott Foundation grant for a project on transitional justice and civil society convened at the London School of Economics.