2025 Institute Faculty
Rachel Brewster
University of Virginia (JD, BA); UNC-Chapel Hill (PhD)
Rachel Brewster is the Jeffrey and Bettysue Hughes Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law. Her scholarly research and teaching focus on international economic law and international dispute settlement. She writes on World Trade Organization (WTO) law, anti-corruption law (including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the OECD Anti-Bribery Treaty), and international relations theory. Brewster serves as co-director of Duke's Center for International and Comparative Law and co-chair of Duke's JD-LLM in International and Comparative Law Program. Prior to Duke Law, Brewster was at Harvard University where she was an assistant professor of law and affiliate faculty member of The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. While there, Brewster took a leave of absence to serve as legal counsel in the Office of the United States Trade Representative in 2008. Before joining Harvard, Brewster was as a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and clerked for Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She has also taught at the University of Hamburg’s Institute of Law and Economics and the University of St. Gallen. Brewster received her BA and JD from the University of Virginia, where she was an article editor for the Virginia Law Review. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill, where she received the John Patrick Hagan Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Christopher Buccafusco
University of Georgia School of Law (JD); University of Chicago (MA); Georgia Institute of Technology (BS)
Christopher Buccafusco is the Edward & Ellen Schwarzman Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law. His research covers a wide range of topics and methods related to creativity, innovation, and intellectual property law. He uses novel social science experiments to explore the nature of innovation markets, and he writes about evolving issues in copyright, patent, and trademark law, including music copyright litigation, pharmaceutical patents, and IP rights for industrial design. For the past decade, Buccafusco has co-hosted an annual workshop on empirical methods in intellectual property law with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and Northwestern University Law School.
Narin Idriz
Leiden University (PhD); Essex University (LLM); Leiden University (LLM)
Narin Idriz is a senior researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Institute within the strand “Advancing Public Interests in International and European Law.” She has Master degrees in International Human Rights Law (Essex University) and European Business Law (Leiden University). She worked as a PhD fellow at the Europa Institute of Leiden University where she defended her thesis in May 2015. Her PhD thesis is titled “Legal constraints on EU Member States as primary law makers: A case study of the proposed permanent safeguard clause on free movement of persons in the EU Negotiating Framework for Turkey’s accession.” The thesis identifies constraints on Member States in the context of drafting an Accession Agreement flowing from three legal sources: EU-Turkey association law, EU enlargement law and practice, and lastly EU constitutional law. Narin worked as an Assistant Professor in European Law at Utrecht University for two years, after which she joined T.M.C. Asser Institute in 2017. Narin’s research areas of interest are EU external relations, EU-Turkey association law, enlargement law, protection of fundamental rights in the EU in general, and the rights of Third Country Nationals in particular, and last but not least, EU asylum and migration law and policies.
Jayne Huckerby
NYU School of Law (LLM); University of Sydney (LLB)
Jayne Huckerby is clinical professor of law and the inaugural director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Duke University School of Law. She focuses on fact-finding, research, and advocacy in the areas of gender and human rights, gender and national security, human trafficking, and human rights in U.S. foreign policy. She frequently serves as a human rights law expert to international and regional governmental organizations and NGOs, particularly on gender, human rights, and national security, and the nexus between trafficking and terrorism. She has written and co-authored numerous articles, book chapters, and human rights reports and she is editor with Margaret L. Satterthwaite, of Gender, National Security, and Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights Perspectives and of the Research Handbook on Gender Issues and Human Rights (forthcoming). She has also authored opinion pieces in The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, and Just Security, as well as appearing on media outlets including ABC News, CNN, and NPR. A native of Sydney, Australia, Huckerby received her LLB from the University of Sydney, with first class honors. She has an LLM from NYU School of Law where she was a Vanderbilt Scholar, awarded the David H. Moses Memorial prize for graduating first in her LLM class, and was graduate editor on the Journal of International Law and Politics. She is admitted to the New York Bar.
Anna-Alexandra Marhold
University of Amsterdam (LLB, LLM, MA, BA); European University Institute (PhD)
Anna Marhold is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Law and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University. Her specialization is international economic law, with a particular focus on international trade law at the intersection of energy and environmental regulation. Anna has published widely in the field of international economic, trade and energy law and EU external trade relations. Her forthcoming monograph titled Energy in International Trade Law: Concepts, Regulation and Changing Markets (Cambridge University Press) examines energy regulation in international trade law against the backdrop of energy markets that have radically changed over the past decades.
Timothy Meyer
University of California, Berkeley (JD, PhD); Stanford University (MA, BA)
Timothy Meyer is the Richard Allen/Cravath Distinguished Professor in International Business Law at Duke Law. He is an expert in international law—with specialties in international trade, investment and environmental law—and U.S. foreign relations law. He is co-director of Duke Law’s Center for International and Comparative Law. Meyer also serves on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Meyer’s research examines the factors that influence the design, implementation, and evolution of international legal institutions, as well as the role of the constitutional separation of powers in U.S. foreign policymaking. His work has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the California Law Review, the Journal of Legal Analysis and the American and European Journals of International Law, among others. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the Judiciary and has served both as counsel and as an expert in international arbitrations and in cases raising international and foreign relations law issues in U.S. courts. The European Union has also named Meyer to its list of possible chairpersons for arbitrations and trade and sustainable development disputes arising under its trade agreements. Prior to joining the Duke Law faculty in 2022, Meyer was a professor of law and director of the International Legal Studies Program at Vanderbilt University Law School. He has also taught at the University of Georgia School of Law. Before entering the academy, he served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser and clerked for the Honorable Neil M. Gorsuch when Justice Gorsuch served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Misha Plagis
Maastricht University (LLM); Freie Universität Berlin (PhD)
Misha Plagis is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University. Her research focusses on human rights law, with a specific focus on human rights law in Africa, regional and continental courts and tribunals, and African perspectives on international law. She has been a post-doctoral researcher at the Asser Institute, University of Amsterdam, a visiting scholar at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Excellence for International Courts (iCourts) at the University of Copenhagen (2019), the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town (2019), and the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law (2018). Misha is the Associate Editor of The ACtHPR Monitor blog, which provides news, comment, and debate on the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Prior to academia, Misha worked with a number of NGOs in India, South Africa, and the UK.
Jason Rudall
Geneva Graduate Institute (PhD and LLM); Trinity College Dublin (LLB)
Jason Rudall is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University. He has taught a wide variety of subjects including Public International Law, International Environmental Law, International Investment Law, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, Compliance in International Law, as well as Legal Research, Writing and Advocacy. He has taught LLM students, bachelor students, diplomats, international civil servants and judges. Rudall has published with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Routledge, as well as in the American Journal of International Law, amongst other leading law journals and edited volumes. His major works are Altruism in International Law (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020), Compensation for Environmental Damage under International Law (Routledge, 2020) and The UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses: A Commentary (Oxford University Press, 2018). During his law degree, Rudall served as Editor-in-Chief of Ireland’s largest law journal – the Trinity College Law Review. Rudall has worked with UNCTAD and the ILO, participating in their Annual Inter-agency Roundtable on Corporate Social Responsibility at the United Nations in Geneva. He is also involved with informing the discussions of the ad hoc UN Working Group on the Global Compact for the Environment. At the Graduate Institute, Rudall built a successful clinic program, collaborating with UN Environment, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Association for the Prevention of Torture. During his PhD studies, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. At the Graduate Institute, he worked as Programme Manager for the LLM in International Law. Rudall helped to conceive, launch and run this program for six years. He was also appointed Special Advisor to the Academic Dean of the Graduate Institute, providing strategic advice in setting the academic policies and direction of the university.
David L. Schwartz
University of Michigan Law School (JD); University of Illinois (BS)
David Schwartz is the William G. and Virginia K. Karnes Research Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He has focused his teaching and research on intellectual property and patent law, with a particular emphasis on empirical studies of patents and patent litigation. He served as the Associate Dean of Research & Intellectual Life at Northwestern Law School from 2019 until 2022. Professor Schwartz has authored or co-authored over thirty articles. He also co-authored a casebook on the law of design, including design patents. Prior to entering academics in 2006, Professor Schwartz practiced intellectual property law, focusing on patents and patent litigation, for over a decade. He began his career in 1995 as an associate at Jenner & Block.
Cassandra L. Thomson
University of Michigan Law School (JD); University of Michigan (BA)
Casey Thomson is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Education at Duke Law. She also directs Duke Law’s Program on Negotiation & Dispute Resolution. She teaches upper-level courses in Negotiation, Mediation Advocacy, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Exploring the Roles of Gender and Culture in Negotiation. She also teaches first-year Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing, and is a lecturer in the 1L Professional Development Program. Thomson received the law school's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018. Thomson routinely conducts negotiation workshops for programs within Duke Medical School and for international law firms. She has been a visiting scholar and lecturer in ADR at Mackenzie University in São Paulo, Brazil. Thomson is one of four lead trainers approved by the North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission to teach the 40-hour North Carolina Superior Court Mediator Training Program. Thomson served as the Co-Chair of the ABA's Legal Education in Dispute Resolution Committee from 2022 to 2024. She is a certified mediator with the International Mediation Institute, North Carolina Superior Court, and a CDRC Mediator with the New York Peace Institute. Prior to joining the Duke Law, Thomson was an attorney with Latham & Watkins LLP in Los Angeles and Chicago. She was a member of the litigation department, and her practice focused on complex commercial litigation, including antitrust, RICO, fraud, employment discrimination, and insolvency-related matters. She regularly practiced in both state and federal courts and she appeared in arbitral proceedings before the Players’ Status Committee of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Thomson clerked for the Honorable John F. Walter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.