Thomas H. Lee

Research and Teaching Areas

International Law; Civil Procedure; Courts–Supreme Court; Federal Courts; Constitutional Law & Theory; Law of War; International Arbitration

Bio

Thomas Lee teaches and writes in the fields of international law, international commercial and investor-state arbitration, comparative and U.S. constitutional law, civil procedure, legal history, and U.S. federal courts and jurisdiction. He has also taught International Trade Law and Telecommunications Law and Data Privacy, and seminars on Asian Americans and the Law (with Judge Denny Chin, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit), Civil Law and Common Law, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Lee has been a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School (2017-18, 2005-6), Harvard Law School (2012-13), and the University of Virginia School of Law (2007); and an Adviser to the Constitutional Court of Korea (2006-12).

Before joining Fordham in 2002, Professor Lee clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, and practiced with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and Munger, Tolles & Olson. From 1991 to 1995, he served as a U.S. naval signals-intelligence officer deployed at sea in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans and ashore in Korea and Japan and with the National Security Agency. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Law School, where he was Articles Chair of the Law Review.

Professor Lee is Of Counsel at Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, and a Member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the American Law Institute (ALI).

Professor Lee also maintains an active Supreme Court practice in matters of public interest implicating constitutional rights, data privacy, federal courts and jurisdiction, and U.S. foreign relations and national security. He filed the following briefs in the 2017 October Term:

Petition for certiorari and reply in Power Ventures, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc. (No. 16-1105) (applicability of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 to Facebook user data)
Brief amici curiae in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC (No.16-712) (whether the Constitution permits Congress to use non-Article III tribunals to review challenges to patent validity, with Professor John Golden of University of Texas Law School)
Brief amici curiae in Animal Science Products, Inc., v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical, Inc. (No.16-1220) (deference owed by U.S. courts to a foreign government’s assertion of its law and whether U.S. courts should abstain on the ground of international comity, with Professor Samuel Estreicher of New York University School of Law)

Selected Publications

The Law of Nations and the Judicial Branch, 106 Geo L. J. 1707 (2018)
Natural Born Citizen, 67 Am. U. L. Rev. 327 (2017)
Double Remedies in Double Courts, 26 Eur. J. Int’l L. 519 (2015) (with Sungjoon Cho)
The Law of War and the Responsibility to Protect Civilians: A Reinterpretation, 55 Harvard Int'l L. J. 251 (2014)
The Three Lives of the Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role of the Judiciary in U.S. Foreign Relations, 89 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1645 (2014)
The Civil War in U.S. Foreign Relations Law: A Dress Rehearsal for Modern Transformations, 53 St. Louis L. J. 53 (2008)
The Safe-Conduct Theory of the Alien Tort Statute, 106 Colum. L. Rev. 830 (2006)
University Dons and Warrior Chieftains: Two Concepts of Diversity, 72 Fordham L. Rev. 2301 (2004)
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, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 1765 (2004)
Making Sense of the Eleventh Amendment: International Law and State Sovereignty, 96 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1027 (2002)

Education

Harvard, AB, AM, JD; PhD candidate (ABD, Political Science)

Thomas H. Lee

Leitner Family Professor of International Law; Director of Graduate and International Studies