Duncan B. Hollis

Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law

Duncan B. Hollis is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law at Temple Law School. His scholarship engages with issues of international law, interpretation, and cybersecurity, with a particular emphasis on treaties, norms, and other forms of international regulation.

Hollis is currently a non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an elected member of the American Law Institute, where he served as an Adviser on its project to draft a Fourth Restatement on the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. In 2016, he was elected by the General Assembly of the Organization of the American States to a four-year term on the OAS’s Inter-American Juridical Committee. There, he has served as the Rapporteur on binding and non-binding agreements as well as the Rapporteur on improving the transparency of State views on international law’s application to cyberspace. Hollis has also served as a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School, a Visiting Professor at LUISS Università Guido Carli, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. For more than a decade he was a regular contributor to the international law blog, Opinio Juris.

Professor Hollis’s books include The Oxford Guide to Treaties (OUP, 2nd ed., 2020), the first edition of which was awarded the 2013 ASIL Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers; International Law (with Allen Weiner), the 7th edition of one of the leading textbooks; and a forthcoming work with Jens Ohlin, Defending Democracies: Combatting Foreign Election Interference in a Digital Age (OUP, forthcoming 2020). His articles have appeared in various journals and books, including the American Journal of International Law, Texas Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Harvard Journal of International Law, and Virginia Journal of International Law.

Professor Hollis received an A.B., summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College. In 1996, he completed a joint-degree program, receiving a Masters in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, from Boston College Law School.

Following graduation, Professor Hollis worked for the International Department of Steptoe & Johnson LLP. In 1998, Professor Hollis joined the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked until joining the Temple faculty in 2004. During his tenure at the State Department, Professor Hollis served for several years as the attorney-adviser for treaty affairs, working on various legal and constitutional issues associated with the negotiation, conclusion, and implementation of U.S. treaties. Professor Hollis’s practice has included international litigation before the International Court of Justice. In particular, he served as Counsel to the United States in the provisional measures phase of the Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States) and contributed to the U.S. presentation in the Oil Platforms Case (Iran v. United States). Today, he continues to serve as an expert witness for international litigation and consults regularly, including advising the Microsoft Corporation on its Digital Peace agenda.

Read more about Professor Hollis in the Temple Law Directory »