William S. Dodge

William S. Dodge is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution. He is a Founding Editor of TLB, the Transnational Litigation Blog. He joined the George Washington University Law School faculty in 2024 after teaching at UC Davis School of Law (2015-2024) and UC Law San Francisco (1995-2015).

Professor Dodge is currently a Reporter for the second phase of the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law. He also serves as a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and an Adviser to the ALI’s Restatement (Third) of the Conflict of Laws. He previously served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as Co-Reporter for the first phase of the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018.

Professor Dodge is co-author (with Detlev Vagts, Hannah Buxbaum, and Harold Koh) of the casebook Transnational Business Problems (7th ed. Foundation Press 2024), co-author (with George Bermann and Donald Childress) of Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell (2d ed. West 2021), and co-editor (with David Sloss and Michael Ramsey) of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge University Press 2011), which won the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificate of merit. He has more than 80 other publications in books and law reviews, including the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada have relied on his work.

Professor Dodge teaches International Business Transactions, International Litigation and Arbitration, Conflict of Laws, and Contracts. He won the Distinguished Teaching Award both at UC Davis and at UC Law San Francisco.

Professor Dodge received his BA in History, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1986. After teaching English in Tianjin, China, he attended Yale Law School, where he was a Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal, served as Director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, and earned his JD in 1991. Professor Dodge clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1993 to 1995, he was an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC.