Profile

Professor Benjamin Davis joined the College of Law faculty in 2003 and retired on Jan. 31, 2021. He is a graduate of Harvard College (B.A.), Harvard Law School (J.D), and Harvard Business School (M.B.A.) where he was articles editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. Professor Davis taught in the areas of contracts, commercial law, alternative dispute resolution, arbitration, public international law, international business transactions, and 3L extended bar preparation.

Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Davis was an Associate Professor at Texas Wesleyan (now Texas A & M) University School of Law. Between 1983 and 1986, he worked in Paris, France as a Development Consultant in West Africa, and as a Strategic Business Consultant with Mars and Co in Europe. In 1986, he became the American Legal Counsel at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce where he supervised directly or indirectly over 5000 international commercial arbitration and mediation cases, made filings before courts around the world on behalf of the ICC, assisted with the drafting of arbitration laws in countries such as India and Sri Lanka, and led conferences in Eastern and Western Europe, North America, and Asia. From 1989-1993 he led the creation of the International Court of Arbitration’s original Case Management System in the transition from DOS to Windowns environment and which remains a robust base for the subsequent two generations of technology development at the Court. In 1995-1996 he led the development of the internet strategy of the court. In 1996, he was promoted to Director, Conference Programmes and Manager of the Institute of World Business Law where he organized training sessions on international contracts, dispute resolution, project finance, and electronic commerce.

He is the creator of fast-track international commercial arbitration and the creator of the International Competitions for Online Dispute Resolution (ICODR) from 2000 to 2005 by which students from around the world competed in online negotiation, mediation, arbitration and litigation. He is a Board Member of the Society of American Law Teachers, former Council Member of the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution where he is Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee, and Liaison for the Section to the ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline (Pipeline Council). From 2007-2009 he was Co-chair of the Online Dispute Resolution Committee of the Section on Dispute Resolution. From 2000-2002, he was Assistant Reporter for the American Bar Association Task Force on E-commerce and Alternative Dispute Resolution. He is a former member and Subcommittee Chair for the Arbitration Competition for the ABA-Law Student Division Competitions Committee helping develop the arbitration moot court of the ABA. He led the successful effort in the American Society of International Law to pass only the 8th resolution in its history entitled the ASIL Centennial Resolution on Laws of War and Detainee Treatment. Professor Davis has given numerous presentations and speeches around the world. He is a Fellow of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution. He is a contributing editor at Jurist and the SALTLAW Blog. He has published dozens of articles on topics related to international and domestic arbitration, online and offline dispute resolution, and international law. He has accepted to serve on the founding editorial board for the International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution, published by Eleven International Publishing, the publisher of the international treatise on ODR Theory and Practice.