Ruti G. Teitel

Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law
Chair, Global Law and Justice Colloquium
Co-Director, Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy
Visiting Professor, Hebrew University School of Law, Mt. Scopus
Straus Fellow, NYU Law School's Straus Institute for the
    Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2012-2013)

 

An internationally recognized authority on international law, international human rights, transitional justice, and comparative constitutional law, Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.  Next year, she will be a Straus Fellow at New York University Law School's Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2012-2013).

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, contending that the law can play a profound role in periods of radical change in advancing a new sense of legitimacy.

Her just published book Humanity’s Law (OUP 2011) explores a paradigm shift in international affairs. For an online Roundtable Discussion on Opinio Juris, click here.  Click here for mention in NewStatesman Books of 2011.  Click here for a review in Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations.  Click here for a review in The European Journal of Internatonal Law.  A panel discussion about the book was held on May 23, 2012  at Tel-Aviv University Law School.

Her extensive body of scholarly writing on comparative law, human rights, and constitutionalism is published in many law reviews, including:  "Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Why International Law Really Matters"  in the Global Policy Journal (Vol. 1, Issue 2, May 2010),  which won the GPPN and the Global Policy Journal Best Article Prize.  Other recent articles include:  “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. She has contributed dozens of book chapters to published volumes relating to law and politics, including “Transitional Justice and the Transformation of Constitutionalism,” in the Comparative Constitutional Law Handbook (ed. Rosalind Dixon and Tom Ginsburg, Edward Elgar 2011 ); “Global Justice, Poverty and the International Economic Order,” in The Philosophy of International Law (Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas, eds., Oxford University Press 2010) (coauthored with Rob Howse) ; “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. She serves on the Board of Editors of Oxford’s International Journal of Transitional Justice, of the Journal, Humanity as well the Editorial Advisory Board of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law.

A cum laude graduate of Georgetown University, Professor Teitel received her J.D. from Cornell Law School and has been a Senior Fellow at the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. She has taught at Yale, Fordham and Tel Aviv Law Schools, as well as Columbia University’s Politics Dept and its School of International and Public Affairs.

She is the founding co-chair of the American Society of International Law, Interest Group on Transitional Justice and Rule of Law. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a member of the International Law Association Human Rights Law Committee, London and US.  She is on the Steering Committee at the University of Leiden Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies Post-Conflict Justice and 'Local Ownership' Research Project.  Prof. Teitel is an Advisory Board Member, Security in Transition Research Programme, European Research Council, London School of Economics. For more info, go to:  http://www.securityintransition.org/.