Rate My Professor Eugene Kontorovich

Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where he also serves as Executive Director of the Center for the Middle East and International Law. He earned a B.A. with general and departmental honors from the University of Chicago in 1996 and a J.D. with high honors in 2001, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif, served on the University of Chicago Law Review, and received the Bradley Fellowship in Law and Economics, Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship, and Bradley Fellowship in Law and Governance. After law school, he clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 2001 to 2002. Kontorovich began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at George Mason University School of Law from 2003 to 2007. He then served as Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 2005 to 2007, followed by Associate Professor from 2007 to 2011 and Professor from 2011 to 2018 at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He returned to George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School as Professor of Law in 2018 and became Founding Director of the Center in 2019. Additionally, he has been Director of the International Law Department and Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum since 2015, and in 2025 joined the Heritage Foundation as Senior Research Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

Professor Kontorovich is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on universal jurisdiction, maritime piracy, international law, constitutional law, and the Israel-Arab conflict. He has authored over thirty major scholarly articles and book chapters published in premier outlets including the American Journal of International Law, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Journal of Legal Analysis. Key publications include the edited volume Economic Analysis of International Law (Edward Elgar, 2016); “Unsettled: A Global Study of Settlements in Occupied Territory,” 9 Journal of Legal Analysis 285 (2017); “Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris and the Borders of Israel,” 58 Arizona Law Review 633 (2016, with Abraham Bell); “A Guantanamo on the Sea”: The Difficulty of Dealing With Pirates and Terrorists,” 98 California Law Review 234 (2010); and “The Constitutionality of International Courts: The Forgotten Precedent of Slave Trade Tribunals,” 158 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 39 (2009). His scholarship has been cited by appellate courts in the United States and internationally. Kontorovich has received the Federalist Society’s Paul M. Bator Award (2012) for excellence in legal scholarship, teaching, and public impact; a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Sciences, Princeton (2011-2012); and the Lady Davis Visiting Professorship at Hebrew University (2013-2014). His expertise is regularly featured in major media such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal (frequent editorial contributor), NPR, and others, and he has testified before U.S. Congress on Arab-Israeli conflict issues while advising officials in Israel, the U.S., and Europe.