Teaching Conflict of Laws at U.S Law Schools
January 7, 2025
Image by IntelligentVisualDesing from Pixabay
To kick off 2025, I thought it would be interesting to look at how many top U.S. law schools offer a course in Conflict of Laws. While the topics covered here at TLB overlap with those covered in several traditional law school courses—including Civil Procedure, International Business Transactions, and International Law—significant overlap exists with respect to Conflict of Laws. That course traditionally covers personal jurisdiction, choice of law, and the enforcement of judgments. Each of these topics have been the subject of a great many blog posts here at TLB.
With the help of a research assistant, I reviewed the course offerings of the top 50 U.S. law schools (as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in 2024) during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years. We recorded whether Conflict of Laws was offered at each school. We also recorded the names of each professor who taught Conflict of Laws during those years. Finally, we recorded the other classes generally taught by these professors (though not necessarily during these two years) to get a sense for their overall teaching package.
We found that Conflict of Laws was offered at approximately 60% of top U.S. law schools during the time period in question. A chart detailing our findings for each school appears at the bottom of this post. Visiting or adjunct professors are identified with an asterisk.
We also found that the professors who taught Conflicts were most likely to also teach Civil Procedure (14), Constitutional Law (11), Torts (7), Federal Courts (6), Property (5), and International Law (5). As someone who teaches Contracts as well as Conflicts, I was surprised to discover that there were only two other professors who shared these teaching interests. One is Peter Hay, who teaches at Emory. The other is Hannah Buxbaum, who teaches at Indiana. TLB Editor Extraordinaire Bill Dodge teaches both Contracts and Conflict of Laws, but his prior institution—U.C. Davis—was (unjustly) ranked just outside the top 50 in the 2024 U.S. News Rankings. If we were to rerun the study next year, then he would be added to this exclusive list because his current institution—George Washington—is comfortably within the top 50.
| USN Ranking (2024) | School | Conflict of Laws Offered? | Professor(s) |
| 1 | Stanford University | No | |
| 2 | Yale University | No | Kim Roosevelt* |
| 3 | University of Chicago | Yes | William Baude |
| 4 (tie) | Duke University | Yes | Justin Desautels-Stein* |
| 4 (tie) | Harvard University | Yes | Stephen Sachs; Joseph Singer |
| 4 (tie) | University of Pennsylvania (Carey) | No | |
| 4 (tie) | University of Virginia | Yes | John Harrison |
| 8 | Columbia University | Yes | Nathaniel Berman* |
| 9 (tie) | New York University | Yes | Yuko Nishitani*; Louise Ellen Teitz* |
| 9 (tie) | Northwestern University (Pritzker) | Yes | James Pfander |
| 9 (tie) | University of Michigan – Ann Arbor | No | |
| 12 | University of California – Berkeley | Yes | Andrew Bradt |
| 13 | University of California – Los Angeles | Yes | Clyde Spillenger |
| 14 (tie) | Cornell University | Yes | Brian Richardson |
| 14 (tie) | Georgetown University | Yes | Carlos Vazquez |
| 16 (tie) | University of Minnesota | No | |
| 16 (tie) | University of Texas – Austin | Yes | Patrick Woolley |
| 16 (tie) | Washington University in St. Louis | No | |
| 19 | Vanderbilt University | No | |
| 20 (tie) | University of Georgia | No | |
| 20 (tie) | University of North Carolina | Yes | John Coyle |
| 20 (tie) | University of Notre Dame | Yes | Jay Tidmarsh; Jeffrey Pojanowski |
| 20 (tie) | University of Southern California (Gould) | No | |
| 24 | Boston University | No | |
| 25 | Wake Forest University | Yes | Gregory Parks |
| 26 | Ohio State University (Moritz) | No | |
| 26 | Texas A&M University | No | |
| 28 (tie) | Boston College | No | |
| 28 (tie) | Brigham Young University (Clark) | No | |
| 28 (tie) | George Mason University (Scalia) | Yes | Michael Greve; Margaret Earnest* |
| 28 (tie) | University of Florida (Levin) | Yes | Elizabeth Lear |
| 28 (tie) | University of Utah (Quinney) | Yes | Steven Rodger* |
| 33 (tie) | Fordham University | No | |
| 33 (tie) | University of Alabama | Yes | Carol Andrews; Kenneth Rosen |
| 33 (tie) | Washington and Lee University | Yes | David Eggert*; Sarah Cravens* |
| 36 (tie) | Arizona State University (O’Connor) | No | |
| 36 (tie) | University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign | No | |
| 36 (tie) | University of Iowa | No | |
| 36 (tie) | University of Wisconsin – Madison | Yes | Richard Monette |
| 36 (tie) | William & Mary Law School | Yes | Michael Green |
| 41 | George Washington University | No | |
| 42 (tie) | Emory University | Yes | Peter Hay |
| 42 (tie) | Indiana University – Bloomington (Maurer) | Yes | Hannah Buxbaum; Steve Sanders |
| 42 (tie) | Southern Methodist University (Dedman) | No | |
| 42 (tie) | University of California – Irvine | No | |
| 46 (tie) | Baylor University | Yes | Luke Meier |
| 46 (tie) | University of Kansas | Yes | Richard Levy |
| 48 (tie) | Florida State University | Yes | David Landau |
| 48 (tie) | University of Colorado – Boulder | Yes | Justin Desautels-Stein |
| 48 (tie) | University of Washington | Yes | Peter Nicolas |
| 48 (tie) | Villanova University (Widger) | Yes | Doris Brogan |
| 52 | Pepperdine University (Caruso) | No |