Rate My Professor Brad Roth

Brad R. Roth is Professor of Political Science and Law at Wayne State University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Law School. He received his B.A. in Political Science with high honors from Swarthmore College in 1984, J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1987, LL.M. in International and Foreign Law from Columbia Law School in 1992 as a Ford Foundation Fellow, and Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. Before entering academia, Roth served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1987 to 1988 and practiced as a litigation attorney at Hannoch Weisman, P.C. from 1988 to 1991. He joined Wayne State University in 1997 as Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in 2001 and full Professor in 2011. Roth has held visiting positions including Lecturer and Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law in 1996, Visiting Professor at the University of Helsinki in 2002, Mari State University in 2006, University of Goettingen in 2012, National Taiwan University in 2016, and Visiting Scholar at the University of Copenhagen in 2017. He represented the American Branch on the International Law Association Committee on Recognition/Non-Recognition of States and Governments from 2010 to 2018.

Roth specializes in international law, comparative public law, and democratic theory, applying political and legal theory to issues such as sovereignty, human rights, international criminal law, and the law of peace and security. His major publications include the books Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law (Oxford University Press, 1999), which won the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for best work in a specialized area, and Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement: Premises of a Pluralist International Legal Order (Oxford University Press, 2011). He has co-edited Democratic Governance and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Supreme Law of the Land? Debating the Contemporary Effects of Treaties within the United States Legal System (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and Democracy and International Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020), as well as the textbook International Law, 6th edition (Carolina Academic Press, 2019). Roth has authored approximately 50 journal articles and book chapters, including “Democratization’s Discontents: Rediscovering the Virtues of the Non-Intervention Norm” (Chicago Journal of International Law, 2022) and “Self-Determination Short of Secession” (Research Handbook on Secession, 2022). His honors include Wayne State University Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Awards in 2000 and 2013, and induction into the WSU Academy of Scholars in 2018. Roth teaches undergraduate, graduate, and professional courses including International Law, Human Rights, U.S. Foreign Relations Law, and Political Theory of Public Law.