Visiting Assistant Professor of Law

Suzanne Katzenstein works at the intersection of international law and international relations and is centrally interested in questions about institutional design and change.  Her current research focuses on the creation and design of international courts and tribunals as well as the changing role of international law in domestic courts, particularly procedural rules such as foreign sovereign immunity. Her teaching interests include international civil procedure and litigation, civil procedure, international law in U.S. courts, international business transactions, international investment law, and international criminal law. She uses comparative analysis across many of these issue areas to examine the shared but overlooked dynamics of international legal change. Her broader research agenda focuses on the role of the U.S. in the evolution of international law as well as the role of international law in the U.S. legal system.

Prior to joining the Duke Law faculty in 2011 as a visiting assistant professor, Katzenstein was a Mellon Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University, where she is pursuing a PhD in political science. Katzenstein received her BA from Wesleyan University in 1999, graduating phi beta kappa, after which she studied in India as a Fulbright Scholar. She received her JD in 2004 from Harvard Law School, where she served as co-editor-in-chief, executive editor, and primary editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. She also co-headed the classroom observation component of a study on gender at Harvard Law School. She received the Chayes International Public Service Fellowship for East Timor in 2002.

Katzenstein’s PhD dissertation is titled "Innovating to Protect the Status Quo: The Creation of New Enforcement Mechanisms in International Law." Other publications and working papers include "Breaking International Custom: Domestic Courts, Foreign Sovereign Immunity, and Pathways of Legal Change" (working paper); "In the Shadow of Crisis: The Creation of International Courts in the Twentieth Century" (working paper); "Expediency of the Angels," The National Interest (March/April, 2009, with Jack Snyder); and "Hybrid Tribunals: Searching for Justice in East Timor," Harvard Human Rights Journal, Student Note (Spring 2003).