Honoring David P Stewart: Call for Contributions

Photo by Kristian Løvstad on Unsplash

David P. Stewart will soon retire from Georgetown Law, where he has been a Professor of the Practice since 2008 after retiring from a distinguished career at the U.S. Department of State. In honor of his many contributions to the field and to his colleagues and students, Georgetown Law will host a celebration of his life and work on Friday November 22, 2024. In conjunction with this event, the Georgetown Journal of International Law is issuing a call for contributions to a digital monograph to honor his career and work (details below).

Readers of TLB are likely familiar with Professor Stewart’s work and career as he has had an outsized impact on the field. He is the author or co-author of widely read works on private international law, law and diplomacy, sovereign immunity, and human rights, including his casebook International and Transnational Criminal Law written with Professors David Luban, Julie O’Sullivan, and Neha Jain.

Professor Stewart was honored in 2022 with the Charles Siegel Distinguished Service Award by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) for his years of dedicated service to the organization, including as President and Chair of the Board of Directors. He has served on the Inter-American Juridical Committee of the Organization for American States and the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law, and he is an honorary editor of the American Journal of International Law. He was also Co-Reporter on the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law.

Many of us in the field also know Professor Stewart as an extraordinarily generous colleague and mentor. His move to Georgetown, where he taught as a member of the adjunct faculty for over 25 years, accompanied the launch of the Global Law Scholars (GLS) Program. For a small group of students committed to a career in international law, the Program enriches their study, orients them to the field and helps place them in internship and practice settings. We can both attest to Professor Stewart’s investment in the program and dedication to his students, both past and present. Professor Stewart has been that rare mentor whose dedication to supporting those more junior has long inspired those around him to be their best selves. Or maybe it is just his witty quips—“it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s jus cogens!”

Readers who would like to celebrate Professor Stewart’s distinguished career are invited to attend the event at Georgetown or to write their reflections on his life and work or submit a short scholarly piece of work for consideration for inclusion in a digital monograph to be published by the Georgetown Journal of International Law.