Ryan Mellske's teaching and research focus on international arbitration. He is also Head Coach of Duke Law School's moot court team for the annual Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot.
The founder of Flex Arbitri PLLC in Washington, DC, Mellske has acted as counsel in major state-state, investor-state, and transnational commercial disputes. Representative matters include a territory dispute between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; Abaclat v. Argentina (ICSID) (arising from Argentina's historic debt default); and ConocoPhillips v. Venezuela (ICC) (arising from Chavez's nationalization of the petroleum industry). He recently won an order of discovery in the Western District of North Carolina for use in an arbitration in Canada, pursuant to 28 USC 1782.
Mellske is co-author of The International Arbitration Rulebook: A Guide to Arbitral Regimes (Kluwer Law International, 2019). He has also published For Greater Certainty: Calibrating Investment Treaties to Protect Foreign Investment and Public Health, 30 Md. J. Int'l L. 82 (2015). Mellske also participates as a panelist at international arbitration conferences hosted by, inter alia, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the American Society of International Law (ASIL), and the New York International Arbitration Center (NYIAC).
Mellske received his JD and LLM in International & Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law in 2009. He also holds a Master of Arts in Global Politics from Illinois State University and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Illinois Wesleyan University. Mellske speaks fluent Spanish, having studied and worked in Spain and Latin America.
