Faculty & Scholarship

Joost H.B. Pauwelyn

Professor of Law

Director of the JDLLM Program in International

and Comparative Law

Joost Pauwelyn Professor Pauwelyn's areas of concentration are international economic law (in particular, the law of the World Trade Organization and international investment law), public international law and European Union law. His research focuses on the problem of conflict of norms in public international law, in particular, the relationship between WTO law and other norms of international law, and the settlement of disputes in the WTO and other international tribunals, especially health, environmental and investment disputes.

Professor Pauwelyn received his Bachelor’s degree in law (Cand. Jur.), cum laude, from the University of Namur, Belgium; his Master’s degree in law (Lic. Jur.), magna cum laude, from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, his Magister Juris, with first class honours, from the University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, UK, and Ph.D. in law, from the University of Neuchtel, Switzerland. He was also an Erasmus scholar at the University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College, a researcher at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and attended the Hague Academy of International Law in The Netherlands.

Prior to joining the Duke Law faculty, he served as a Legal Affairs Officer for the World Trade Organization in Geneva (1996-2002), first, in the Legal Affairs Division, then in the Appellate Body Secretariat. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary College, University of London, a Visiting Lecturer at Columbia Law School, and an Emile Noel Fellow, New York University School of Law. Former positions have included Assistant Professor at the University of Neuchtel (Switzerland) and Associate in the litigation and public law departments of De Bandt, van Hecke & Lagae law offices in Brussels. He was also a consultant with, among others, the European Energy Charter Secretariat, Brussels, the United Nations University, Tokyo, the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM).

Pauwelyn regularly advises law firms, governments and other actors in WTO dispute settlement cases.

He received the 2005 Paul Guggenheim Prize for his book on Conflict of Norms in Public International Law, How WTO Law Relates to other Rules of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and most recently co-edited a book on Human Rights and International Trade (Oxford University Press, 2005). In 2006, he received the Duke Law School's Faculty Scholarship Award.

Professor Pauwelyn is a Member of the Board of Editors of the Journal of International Economic Law (EJIL), the International Trade Law Committee of the International Law Association (ILA), the American Society of International Law (ASIL) as well as the European Society of International Law (ESIL).

From April to July 2006, Pauwelyn was a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. In the Spring semester of 2007, he will be a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law Center.

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