International Law Scholarship and Impact

UC Law SF’s international law faculty are leading voices across a range of areas and issues including international development, the rapidly changing legal environment in East Asia, equality and justice for immigrants to the U.S., and the legal rights of climate-displaced people.

Recent News

New Faculty

Moria Paz joins us as associate professor of law from Stanford University, where she was a visiting scholar. Her books include the forthcoming Network or State? International Law and the History of Jewish Self-Determination (2025), and she is editor of The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century (2019) with James Loeffler, published by Cambridge University Press.

Blaine Bookey ’09 joins us as a visiting assistant professor of law after having long served as an adjunct professor and legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. Her research focuses on refugee and human rights law. Professor Bookey was recognized as one of the Top Women Lawyers in California by the Daily Journal in 2020.

A Global Resource for Justice and Law 

UC Law SF’s international law centers conducted a broad range of program initiatives in 2023-24 to address some of the most pertinent challenges and issues impacting the international law community.

The Center for East Asian Legal Studies hosted 11 public events with senior scholars and practitioners from East Asia and the U.S. focusing on topics ranging from tensions in the South China Sea and U.S. trade policy with East Asia, to cybercurrency regulation in Japan. 

The International Development Law Center supported exchange visits with law faculties in Ghana, Kosovo, and Nigeria, and provided legislative drafting training to fisheries and legal officers from Samoa and around the Pacific Region.

The Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship and Equality hosted interdisciplinary events and lectures to broaden understanding of equality issues, including racial justice and the U.S. immigration system.

The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies expanded its research into climate displacement by conducting fieldwork in Central America, and publishing studies and opinion pieces on the rights of climate-displaced people. 

UC Law SF Honors Professor Setsuo Miyazawa

Professor Setsuo Miyazawa’s retirement announcement in 2023 led to an outpouring of well wishes from students and faculty alike.

Professor Miyazawa is a renowned scholar of Japanese law and sociolegal studies, who has been instrumental in driving scholarly collaboration across the Asia Pacific region since he joined UC Law SF’s faculty in 2008.

Working alongside Professor Keith Hand, Miyazawa developed the law school’s East Asian curriculum. Together they organized panel talks and events on wide-ranging topics, before establishing the Center for East Asian Legal Studies in 2015.

Miyazawa co-founded several organizations to promote scholarly collaboration throughout his career, including the Asian Law and Society Association, and he has received multiple honors in recognition of his many contributions to UC Law SF.

Selected Scholarship

Moria Paz explores types of freedom-of-movement claims and key gaps in the international laws governing those claims in her article Toward a Taxonomy of Freedom of Movement Claims: Identifying Rights-Based Pathways for Today’s Refugees Beyond the 1951 Refugee Convention (2024), published in Harvard International Law Journal.

Professor and CNDR Director Hiro Aragaki published a study of the Federal Arbitration Act, comparing it against the arbitration acts of 196 countries and suggesting avenues for reform on the occasion of its 100th anniversary in 2025.

Professor Aragaki has been actively supporting the worldwide advancement of ADR. He serves as vice chair of the ABA Section of International Law’s International Arbitration Committee, mediation advisor to the World Bank’s Business Ready report, co-chair of the Academic Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) USA, board member for the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI) and chair of ABA ROLI’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative Council, among others. He submitted (with Srividhya Ragavan, Texas A&M) an invited response to the Expert Committee of the Indian Ministry of Law & Justice on proposed arbitration reforms.

Keith Hand presented his research on U.S.-China lawfare at the: Asian Law Scholars Conference, Seattle (2023); the UCLA Anderson Forecast Panel on Geo-Politics, China, and the Future of Tech, San Francisco (2023); A Critical Examination of ‘De-coupling’: Symposium of the Washington International Law Journal, Seattle (2024); and the Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Denver (2024).

Jessica Vapnek presented Gender-Silent Legislative Drafting at the International Women’s Day Conference, sponsored by Feminist Legal Studies and the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, Canada.