Robert D. Sloane

Biography

After receiving his JD in 2000, Professor Robert D. Sloane worked for the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet (now known as Tibet Justice Center) under the auspices of Yale Law School’s Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights. He led fact-finding missions to Nepal, India, and Tibet; wrote submissions for the UN Commission on Human Rights and human rights treaty bodies; represented asylum seekers; and published several reports and law journal articles on human rights. Professor Sloane then served two clerkships, first for Judge Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (formerly of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York). He also practiced international law at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, where he focused on international arbitration and litigation and worked on, among other cases, the Avena litigation before the International Court of Justice, challenging the convictions of Mexican nationals on death row based on violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

Professor Sloane continues to practice international law periodically as a consultant and has worked on arbitrations conducted under the auspices of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the International Chamber of Commerce and specialized tribunals, as well as assisting with the preparation of expert opinions for foreign sovereigns and multinational corporations. He also practices international human rights law on a pro bono basis, chiefly in his capacity as a member of the Board of Tibet Justice Center, a non-governmental organization that seeks to promote self-determination and human rights for the Tibetan people through legal advocacy.

Before joining Boston University School of Law, Professor Sloane served as a visiting lecturer-in-law and Orville H. Schell, Jr. Fellow at Yale Law School, where he taught international human rights and international arbitration, and as an associate-in-law at Columbia Law School.

Professor Sloane’s scholarship focuses on international law and related fields including national security and foreign relations law, the law of war, international criminal law, jurisprudence, and international dispute resolution.

His 2009 article “The Cost of Conflation: Preserving the Dualism of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello in the Contemporary Law of War,” published in Volume 34 of the Yale Journal of International Law, received the Lieber Prize, awarded by the American Society of International Law’s Francis Lieber Society for outstanding scholarship in the field of the law of armed conflict by an author under the age of 35. His 2007 article “Prologue to a Voluntarist War Convention,” published in Volume 106 of the Michigan Law Review, received a certificate of merit from the Francis Lieber Society based on the same criteria. In 2013, he was awarded the Francis Deák Prize for “On the Use and Abuse of Necessity in the Law of State Responsibility,” published in Volume 106 of the American Journal of International Law, awarded by the American Society of International Law for meritorious scholarship in the journal by a younger author. Professor Sloane’s current work focuses on foreign relations law, the uses of ideology in international law, the law of war, and international criminal law.

In 2007, Professor Sloane received a high-level diploma in public international law from the Hague Academy of International Law.

Professor Sloane has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School (Spring 2010); Harvard Law School (Spring 2011), where he served as the John Harvey Gregory Lecturer in World Organization; the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University (2012); Yale Law School (Spring 2014); and the Xiamen Academy of International Law (2016).

Professor Sloane is an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves on the Members Consultative Group for the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law. In 2013, Boston University named him the R. Gordon Butler Scholar in International Law.