Thomas H. Lee

Thomas H. Lee is the Leitner Family Professor of International Law at Fordham, where he teaches civil procedure, constitutional law, federal courts, international law, and the U.S. law of civil-military relations. His meticulously researched and historically-grounded scholarship has argued that the Eleventh Amendment reflected the classical international law principle that only a sovereign state—not its citizens or subjects— has rights against other sovereign states; that the Alien Tort Statute was a national-security peacekeeping statute, not an international human-rights statute, enacted in 1789 when the United States was a militarily weak state; and that the Natural Born Citizen Clause regarding presidential eligibility reflected natural-law principles of membership by descent as well as domestic birthplace. His current research examines the nature of Article III judicial power and the role of the federal courts in American society.

He is Co-Director of the Center on Asian Americans and the Law, Special Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, and a Member of the American Law Institute. He was Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, a Member of the ICSID Panel of Conciliators, Adviser to the Constitutional Court of Korea, and Visiting Professor at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Virginia law schools, as well as Faculty Director of International and Graduate Studies at Fordham from 2006 to 2019. Before his academic career, Lee clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the First Circuit and Justice David Souter of the Supreme Court and served as an active-duty U.S. naval cryptology officer, afloat on submarines and surface combatants and ashore in Korea, Japan, and with the National Security Agency. He holds A.B. (summa cum laude), A.M. (Regional Studies—East Asia), and J.D. degrees from Harvard, where he was Articles Chair of the Harvard Law Review and a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Government.  

Selected Publications

Books

• Justifying War (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

Articles

• The Judicial Power-Admiralty Clause, Heritage Guide to the Constitution (3d ed., forthcoming)
• Congressional Power, Public Rights, and Non-Article III Adjudication, 98 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1113 (2023) (with John Golden)
• Federalism, Private Rights, and Article III Adjudication, 108 Va. L. Rev. 1547 (2022) (with John Golden)
• Article IX, Article III, and the First Congress: The Original Constitutional Plan for the Federal Courts, 1787-1792, 89 Fordham L. Rev. 1895 (2021)
• The United States and Individual and Collective Self-Defense in Northeast Asia in Masahiro Kurosaki and Matthew Waxman, eds., Strengthening the U.S.-Japan Alliance (2021)
• International Law and U.S. Judicial Power in Paul Stephan and Sarah Cleveland, eds., The Fourth Restatement and Beyond (2020).
• In Defense of International Comity, 93 So. Cal. L. Rev. 169 (2020) (with Samuel Estreicher)
• Toward an Interest-Group Theory of Foreign Anti-Corruption Laws, 2019 U. Ill. L Rev. 1227 (with Sean J. Griffith)
• The Law of Nations and the Judicial Branch, 106 Geo. L. J. (2018)
• Natural Born Citizen, 67 Am. U.L. Review 327 (2017)
• Double Remedies in Double Courts, European J. Int'l L, 26 Eur. J. Int'l L. 519 (2015) (with Sungjoon Cho);
• The Law of War and the Responsibility to Protect: A Reinterpretation, 55 Harv. Int'l L. J. 101 (2014)
• The Three Lives of the Alien Tort Statute, 89 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1645 (2014)
• The Safe-Conduct Theory of the Alien Tort Statute, 106 Colum. L. Rev. 830 (2006)
• International Law, International Relations Theory, and Preemptive War: The Vitality of Sovereign Equality Today, 67 Law & Contemp. Probs. 147 (Autumn 2004)
• The Supreme Court of the United States as Quasi-International Tribunal: Reclaiming the Court's Original and Exclusive Jurisdiction over Treaty-Based Suits by Foreign States against States, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 1765 (2004)
• University Dons and Warrior Chieftains: Two Concepts of Diversity, 72 Fordham L. Rev. 2301 (2004)
• Making Sense of the Eleventh Amendment: International Law and State Sovereignty, 96 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1027 (2002)

Book Chapters

• International Arbitration of Patent Claims, in Contemporary Issues in International Arbitration and Mediation: The Fordham Papers 2015 (Arthur W. Rovine, ed., 2016)
• International Law as an Interpretive Tool in the Supreme Court, 1861-1900, in International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (David L. Sloss et al. eds., 2011) (with David L. Sloss)
• The Story of the Prize Cases: Executive Action and Judicial Review in Wartime, in Presidential Power Stories (Curtis Bradley & Chris Schroeder, eds., 2009) (with Michael D. Ramsey)

Symposia and Short Works

• International Relations Theories and International Law
• Fair Winds and Following Seas, Shipmate, 42 Ohio N. U. L. Rev. 877 (2016)
• An Empirical Survey of International Commercial Arbitration Cases in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1970-2014, 39 Fordham Int'l L. J. 307 (2015) (with Vera Korzun)
• International Law and Institutions and the American Constitution in War and Peace, 31 Berkeley J. Int'l L. 291 (2013)
• Les relacions intergovernamentals als Estats Units (Inter-governmental relations and collaboration between the States and the National Government in the United States), La colloaboracio entre l'Estat I les Comunitats Autonomes, Consorci Universitat Internacional Menendez Pelayo de Barcelona (2009)
• The Civil War in U.S. Foreign Relations Law: A Dress Rehearsal for Modern Transformations, 53 St. Louis L. J. 53 (2008)
• Countermajoritarian Federalism, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 2123 (2006)
• Teaching Public Law and International Law in the United States, 18 Sungkyunkwan University Law Review 1 (2006)
• The Augustinian Just War Tradition and the Problem of Pretext in Humanitarian Intervention, 28 Fordham Int'l L. J. 756 (2005)
• The Due Process Vagueness Challenge to Chicago's Anti-Gang Loitering Ordinance: Chicago v. Morales, 527 U. S. 41 (1999), 113 Harv. L. Rev. 276 (1999) (student note)
• Bill of Attainder: The Special Provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, SBC Communications, Inc. v. FCC., 154 F. 3d 226 (5th Cir. 1998), 112 Harv. L. Rev. 1385 (1999) (note)
• Translation of Han Young-woo, The Establishment and Development of Korean Nationalist History, Seoul Journal of Korean Studies (1992)