Professor Sarah Cleveland Named Counselor to State Department

New York, Sept. 8, 2009 -- Sarah H. Cleveland, the Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights and Co-Director of the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, has been appointed Counselor on International Law with the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U. S. State Department. 

 

In this role, she will advise the State Department and the executive branch on international law issues, and will help develop the State Department's position in U.S. litigation involving international and foreign relations law issues, including human rights cases in U.S. courts. She will also serve as the liaison between the Legal Adviser's office, the Office of the Solicitor General, the Department of Justice, and the White House Counsel.

 

Cleveland’s expertise is in the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, international human and labor rights, and the interface between human rights and international trade. As an expert working with the Afghanistan Transitional Commercial Law Project Working Group in 2003, she helped draft a labor code for post-Taliban Afghanistan.

 

A former Rhodes Scholar, Cleveland holds a baccalaureate degree from Brown University, a master’s degree from Oxford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Cleveland has also taught at the Michigan and Harvard law schools and at Oxford University. She joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 2007.

Cleveland will serve in this position, which was formerly held by another Columbia Law School professor, Philip Bobbitt, for two years.

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, criminal, and environmental law.
 
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