A leader in international economic law and procedure, Professor Kathleen Claussen has served as arbitrator, counsel, expert, public servant, and teacher. Her expertise covers several topics of international law, especially trade, investment, international business and labor; dispute settlement and international dispute bodies; national security and cybersecurity law; and, administrative law issues surrounding U.S. foreign relations and transnational agreements.

Her work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others, as well as in leading international law journals. One of her articles on international investment disputes, The International Claims Trade, was awarded the Smit-Lowenfeld Prize in International Arbitration. Professor Claussen is also the co-founder of SAILS: the Consortium for the Study and Analysis of International Law Scholarship. She is the editor (with Geraldo Vidigal) of The Sustainability Revolution in Trade Agreements, forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She also co-edits an open-access textbook on international trade law together with Julian Arato, Joseph Weiler, and Sungjoon Cho. Professor Claussen has also blogged at Lawfare, Just Security, the International Economic Law & Policy Blog, and Opinio Juris, and is regularly featured on or consulted as an expert for various media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times.

Professor Claussen has served as an arbitrator, as counsel, or as counsel to the tribunal in more than a dozen international trade and investment cases. She has been named to three arbitration rosters to serve as panel chair or panel member in state-to-state disputes. She is also regularly called upon to testify as an expert before legislative and independent review boards. In 2021-2022, she co-authored a study commissioned by the Administrative Conference of the United States on alternative dispute resolution in federal agency programs.

Professor Claussen has served as a visiting faculty member or invited researcher at numerous institutions around the world, including Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, the University of Cambridge Lauterpacht Centre for International Law where she was a Brandon Fellow, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, the iCourts Center of Excellence at the University of Copenhagen, the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies, the University of Zurich and Collegium Helveticum, and the World Trade Institute. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty in 2023, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Miami School of Law for five years.

Professor Claussen holds several leadership positions within international law and arbitration professional associations. In 2021, she was appointed co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Economic Law. Her other recent governance appointments include the American Society of International Law (ASIL) International Economic Law Interest Group, the ASIL Executive Council & Executive Committee, and the Junior International Law Scholars Association. She is also a member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration and the Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute settlement.

Before joining the academy, Professor Claussen was Associate General Counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the Executive Office of the President. There, she represented the United States in trade dispute proceedings and served as a legal advisor for the United States in international trade negotiations. She also worked on economic security issues on behalf of USTR at the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force. In 2020-2021, she was an invited member of the Biden-Harris Transition Team, covering trade, commerce, and development agencies.

Earlier in her career, Professor Claussen was Legal Counsel at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague where she advised on disputes between countries, and on investment and commercial arbitrations involving countries and international organizations. She also clerked for the Honorable David F. Hamilton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. At Yale, Professor Claussen served on the board of the Yale Law Journal and was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law. She was awarded the Jerome Sayles Hess Fund Prize for excellence in international law and the Howard M. Holtzmann Fellowship in international dispute resolution.