Closing out her first year at Miami Law, Associate Professor Kathleen Claussen has landed on three continents in the space of a few weeks.
A visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen at iCourts, the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts, took Claussen to Denmark from mid-May until early July. While there, she presented a seminar, “Boilerplate Treaties and Their Interpretation by Courts and Tribunal,” looking at her ongoing project on the delegation by states to dispute management bodies, particularly international economic institutions. While in Denmark, she works on research and has the opportunity to engage with the permanent staff and visiting scholars all of whom work on international courts and tribunals.
“My summer work on boilerplate treaties is part of a larger project that examines repetitive language in international agreements and how those are managed by dispute settlement bodies, Claussen says. “The project complements my research agenda on processes and institutions in international trade and investment law."
In April, Claussen co-chaired the 3-day annual meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C. The meeting focused on how and by whom international law is made, shaped, carried out, as well as how it is taught. Attended by 1,200 practitioners, policymakers, students, and academics across the disciplinary spectrum discussions reflected on the broad manifestations, sources, and implications of international legal practice.
"It was an honor to chair the 112th ASIL Annual Meeting on the theme “International Law in Practice,” featuring more than 100 speakers in conversation on this important topic," she says.
June sees Claussen travelling to Tokyo, Japan, at the 7th Four Societies Conference. The conference brings together international law societies of Australia and New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and the United States with early career scholars around this year’s theme: “Changing Actors in International Law.”
She has also just been nominated to join the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, a nonprofit institution dedicated to improving the quality of justice through the education of lawyers and law enforcement officials in the United States and throughout the world.
Claussen came to Miami Law from Washington, D.C. where she served as associate general counsel at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in the Executive Office of the President. At USTR, she represented the U.S. in international dispute proceedings at the World Trade Organization and before international arbitral tribunals established under U.S. trade agreements. She also served as a legal advisor for the U.S. in international trade negotiations.
Claussen was previously legal counsel at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, where she supported the work of arbitral tribunals resolving diverse types of disputes between countries. Her principal research and teaching areas grow out of her practice in international economic law and dispute settlement.
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