Paul Stephan is the John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law and a senior fellow at theMiller Center of Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Much of his research and teaching concentrate on international and comparative law. He has taught at universities and diplomatic academies in Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, France, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. He served as Counsellor for International Law to the Legal Adviser of the Department of State in 2006-2007, and as Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense in 2020-21. He was coordinating reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States from 2012 to 2018. Stephan joined the UVA Law faculty in 1979 after completing clerkships with Judge LevinH. Campbell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., of the Supreme Court. In 2023 he published The World Crisis and International Law – The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future (Cambridge University Press) and taught a special course at the Hague Academy of International Law on municipal law in international disputes, which was published in 2024 as Municipal Law in International Disputes (Brill Nijhoff). His current work focuses on big data as a basis for national empowerment and a source of international disputes.
