Thomas H. Lee

Research and Teaching Interests

International Law; Laws of War; U.S. Foreign Relations Law; Federal Courts; Legal History; Cyberlaw; National Security Law; International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration; Civil Procedure; Constitutional Law; Law and Political Theory

Bio

Thomas H. Lee is on leave to serve as Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense. He joined the faculty in July 2002, was Director of Graduate and International Studies from 2006 to 2019, and has been the Leitner Family Professor of International Law since 2009. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Virginia School of Law; an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law; and Adviser to the Constitutional Court of Korea (2006-11). He has published many articles and book chapters on international law, the laws of war, international arbitration, U.S. constitutional law, and the U.S. federal courts. His forthcoming book, Justifying War (Oxford University Press, 2020), examines the modern history of legal grounds for war and their connection to moral justifications and policy decisions.

Professor Lee 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. Before his academic career, he clerked for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Associate Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, and worked at Munger, Tolles & Olson and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. From 1991 to 1995, he served as a U.S. naval cryptology officer aboard warships and submarines in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, and ashore in Korea and Japan and with the National Security Agency. He 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 of 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

International Law and U.S. Judicial Power in Paul Stephan and Sarah Cleveland, eds., The Fourth Restatement and Beyond (Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming 2020)
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 (forthcoming 2021)
Toward an Interest-Group Theory of Foreign Anti-Corruption Laws, 2019 U. Ill. L Rev. 1227 (with Sean J. Griffith)
In Defense of International Comity, 93 So. Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2020) (with Samuel Estreicher)
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, A.B., A.M., J.D.; Ph.D. candidate (A.B.D., Political Science)