Profile

José Alvarez is the Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law at the New York University School of Law. Prior to joining NYU he was Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and the executive director of the Center on Global Legal Problems at Columbia Law School. He was formerly a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, an associate professor at the George Washington University's National Law Center, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center. At Columbia he teaches courses on international law, foreign investment, international legal theory, and global governance.

Prior to entering academia in 1989, Professor Alvarez was an attorney adviser with the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State where he worked on cases before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, served on the negotiation teams for bilateral investment treaties and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and was legal adviser to the administration of justice program in Latin America coordinated by the Agency of International Development. Educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University, Professor Alvarez has also been in private practice and was a judicial clerk to the late Hon. Thomas Gibbs Gee of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. A former international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Professor Alvarez is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Law Institute, and has long been active in bar activities at both the local and national levels. He has served on a number of advisory bodies at the national level, including the ABA Task Force relating to the establishment of the ad hoc tribunal to adjudicate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and the UN Association's National Advisory Committee on UN Financing. Prior to assuming the Presidency of the ASIL, Professor Alvarez was chair of the Society’s international organizations section, a member of its Executive Council, co-chair of the 1997 Annual Meeting, and Vice President . He is presently on the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of International Law and the Journal of International Criminal Justice. His recent book, International Organizations as Law-Makers (Oxford), was published in paperback in 2006.