Promise Institute Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law
Professor at the UCLA International Institute
Director, UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations
Director, International and Comparative Law Program
- B.A. Duke University
- J.D. Harvard Law School
- Ph.D. University of California, San Diego
- UCLA Faculty Since 2000
Kal Raustiala is the Promise Institute Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law at UCLA Law School and Professor at the UCLA International Institute. He currently serves as Director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations and Director of the International and Comparative Law Program. From 2012-2015 he served as UCLA’s Associate Vice Provost for International Studies.
Professor Raustiala's research focuses on international law, international relations, and intellectual property. His recent publications include “Who Gets a Nation?” Noema (January 2024); “Ralph Bunche and the Age of Decolonization,” German Review of the United Nations (2024); “Why the United Nations Still Matters,” Foreign Affairs, June 2023 (with Viva Iemanja Jeronimo); “Multistakeholder Regulation and the Future of the Internet,” 75 Federal Communications Law Journal 2 (2023); “The Fight Against China’s Bribe Machine,” Foreign Affairs, October 2021 (with Nicolas Barile); and “Faster Fashion: The Piracy Paradox and its Perils,” 39 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, (Spring 2021)(with Christopher Sprigman). His books include Global Governance in a World of Change (Michael Barnett, Jon Pevehouse, and Kal Raustiala, eds, Cambridge, 2021); The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation (Oxford, 2012) (with Christopher Sprigman), which has been translated into Chinese, Korean, and Japanese; and Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? The Evolution of Territoriality in American Law (Oxford, 2009). His biography of UN diplomat, civil rights advocate, and UCLA alum Ralph Bunche, The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire, was published in 2023 by Oxford and won the Silver Medal from the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award.
In 2016 Professor Raustiala was elected Vice President of the American Society of International Law. He has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Princeton University, the University of Chicago Law School, Melbourne University in Australia, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2016, he was the Yong Shook Lin Visiting Professor of Intellectual Property at the National University of Singapore. A graduate of Duke University, Professor Raustiala holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego.
Prior to coming to UCLA, Professor Raustiala was a research fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, a Peccei Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems, and an assistant professor of politics at Brandeis University. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Raustiala has served on the editorial boards of International Organization and the American Journal of International Law and is a frequent media contributor whose writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New Republic, the New Yorker, Wired, Slate, the International Herald Tribune and Le Monde. Along with Catherine Amirfar of Debevoise & Plimpton, he is co-host of the American Society of International Law’s International Law Behind the Headlines podcast.