William Dodge

UC Davis School of Law

William Dodge

William S. Dodge (@ProfBillDodge) is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law and John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. He is currently a member of the Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law and an Adviser for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of Conflict of Laws. Professor Dodge is the co-author of Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell (2d ed. 2021) and Transnational Business Problems (6th ed. 2019). His articles on international law and transnational litigation have appeared in journals such as the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.

Posts by William Dodge

District Court Permits Clean Air Act Action Against Canadian Company

The presumption against extraterritoriality is the principal tool that U.S. courts use to determine the reach of federal statutes. Last year, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. (2023), the U.S. Supreme modified the presumption by requiring conduct relevant to a provision’s focus to occur in the United States in order for the application…

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Fifty Years in the Conflicts Vineyard: A Celebration of Symeon Symeonides

On May 8-9, Willamette University College of Law and the Conflict of Laws Section of the Association of American Law Schools will host a symposium in celebration of Professor and Dean Emeritus Symeon Symeonides in Salem, Oregon. The speakers will include Francisco Garcimartin Alférez, Lea Brilmayer, Katharina Boele-Woelki, Patrick Borchers, Hannah Buxbaum, Anthony Colangelo, John…

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A Legislative Fix for the Cassirer Case?

Regular TLB readers may be familiar with the Cassirer case seeking to recover a painting by Camille Pissarro that was stolen by the Nazis and is now in the possession of a Spanish museum. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation (2022) that federal courts must apply state choice-of-law rules to…

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