MJ Durkee
William Gardiner Hammond Professorship in Law
Melissa J. (“MJ”) Durkee is an expert in international law with a focus on international legal theory and specialties in business, environment, and governance. Professor Durkee’s scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Virginia Law Review, American Journal of International Law, and other prominent peer-reviewed and student-edited publications. Her volume, States, Firms, And Their Legal Fictions is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. She serves on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law.
Professor Durkee investigates the public-private interactions that produce and interpret international legal norms and considers how legal and institutional design choices affect processes of international cooperation. She has written on international lobbying, interpretative entrepreneurship by business actors, covert or “astroturf” lobbying, and business contributions to treaty development, treaty enforcement, international space law, and climate law. She develops proposals about how international organizations can productively engage with business actors. Durkee theorizes changing relationships between government and private actors at the international level, new methods of ordering, and the shifting public-private divide.
Durkee chairs the International Legal Theory Interest Group of the American Society of International Law and has previously served on the Society’s Executive Committee, among other leadership posts. She recently co-chaired the centennial conference for the American Branch of the International Law Association and has served as supervising editor for the peer-reviewed AJIL Unbound. She frequently serves as a referee for peer-reviewed journals, and has delivered lectures and presentations around the world.
Prior to her arrival at the Washington University School of Law in 2023, Professor Durkee was Allen Post Professor and Associate Dean for International Programs at the University of Georgia School of Law, where she also directed the Dean Rusk International Law Center. She began her academic career at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle where she was presented awards for her scholarship and support of student journals.
Professor Durkee received her law degree from Yale Law School, where she served on the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law. She also studied in Chile and served as a teaching fellow in the Yale University philosophy department. She obtained her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Westmont College, where she earned highest departmental honors in each of her majors and spent an exchange year at the University of Oxford. After law school, Professor Durkee was a judicial clerk for Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and for Judge Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Professor Durkee practiced law in New York with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where she specialized in international litigation and arbitration. She then served as an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School.
Professor Durkee teaches international business transactions, transnational law, corporations, public international law, and international environmental law.
- Education
- J.D., Yale Law School, 2004
- B.A. in Philosophy and English, 2000
- Courses
- International Business Transactions
- Corporations
- Transnational Law
- International Environmental Law
- Public International Law
- Global Governance (summer school)
- Space Law (mini course)
- Publications
In Progess
- The Customization Continuum (extension of the Pledging World Order project, focusing on degree of customization as a dimension of international agreement design).
- Space Enterprises as International Lawmakers: Lobbying, Regulatory Disruption, and other Bottom-Up Modalities, in PRIVATE ENTERPRISES IN SPACE (Jędrzej Górski & Yun Zhao, eds.) (forthcoming 2023) (invited chapter)
BOOK
- STATES, FIRMS, AND THEIR LEGAL FICTIONS: ATTRIBUTING IDENTITY AND RESPONSIBILITY TO ARTIFICIAL ENTITIES (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming February 2024)
ARTICLES
- The Pledging World Order, 48 YALE J. INT’L L. 1 (2023) (pledging is a trans-regime, trans-substantive ordering device that appears both inside and outside of law)
- Industry Groups in International Governance: A Framework for Reform, 14 J. HUM. RTS. & ENV’T 1 (2023) (peer reviewed) (invited contribution)
- Interpretive Entrepreneurs, 107 VA. L. REV. 431 (2021) (interpretation can be a form of “post hoc” international lawmaking; private entities participate)
- Interstitial Space Law, 97 WASH U. L. REV. 423 (2019) (activities of private actors that are attributed to the state can have customary international lawmaking consequences)
- International Lobbying Law, 127 YALE L.J. 1742 (2018) (diverse rules governing private sector access to international governance are best understood and reformed as a body of international lobbying law)
- Translated into Portuguese and reprinted as Direito Internacional do Lobby in Revista Direitos Fundamentais e Alteridade (2023)
- Astroturf Activism, 97 STAN. L. REV. 201 (2017) (accreditation rules exclude businesses from consulting with international officials, with pernicious consequences)
- Featured on JOTWELL (Journal of Things We Like (Lots)): Verity Winship, Business Lobbying Goes Global, Jan. 18, 2017
- The Business of Treaties, 63 UCLA L. REV. 264 (2016) (influence of business in international treaty-making is significant, sometimes beneficial, and under-regulated) (SSRN)
- Featured in Dialectic: Discussing Treaties with Professor Melissa Durkee, UCLA L. REV. (Mar. 30, 2016)
- Persuasion Treaties, 99 VA. L. REV. 63 (2013) (treaties have divergent compliance problems: “persuasion” treaties must attract support of relevant business entities) (SSRN)
- Beyond the Guantánamo Bind: Pragmatic Multilateralism in Refugee Resettlement, 42 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 697 (2011) (SSRN)
CHAPTERS & ESSAYS
- The Ambivalent Logics of Corporate Representation in International Organizations, in DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATION IN AND BY INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS (Samantha Besson, ed.) (forthcoming 2024) (invited chapter)
- Rethinking Participation in Global Governance: Challenges and Reforms in Financial and Health Institutions (Joost Pauwelyn, Ayelet Berman, Tim Büthe & Martino Maggetti, eds.) (Review) 117 AM. J. INT’L L. __ (forthcoming January 2024)
- Space Law as Twenty-First Century International Law, 5 J. LAW & INNOVATION __ (forthcoming 2023) (invited contribution for U. Pennsylvania Carey Law symposium on “The Emerging Commercial Space Age”)
- Including Private Sector Participants in International Rulemaking: Governance Models, in IMPROVING INCLUSIVENESS OF IO RULE-MAKING (forthcoming 2023) (invited contribution for publication by the Organization of Economic Development (OECD))
- Privatizing International Governance, 116 ASIL PROC. 147 (2023)
- International Environmental Law at its Semicentennial: The Stockholm Legacy, 50 GA. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 748 (2022)
- Introduction to the Symposium on Frédéric Mégret, “Are There ‘Inherently Sovereign Functions’ in International Law?”, 115 AJIL UNBOUND 299 (2021)
- Welcoming Participation, Avoiding Capture: A Five-Part Framework, 114 ASIL PROC. 39 (2021)
- The Future of Space Governance, 48 GA. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 711 (2020)
- Global Lawmakers: International Organizations in the Crafting of World Markets, Susan Block-Lieb & Terence C. Halliday (Review) (2017), 113 AM. J. INT’L L. 422 (2019)
- Industry Lobbying and “Interest Blind” Access Norms at International Organizations, 111 AJIL UNBOUND 119 (2017) (standard rules international organizations use to govern lobbying access by industry associations and NGOs can have unexpected consequences)
- Introduction to Symposium on Industry Associations in Transnational Legal Ordering, 111 AJIL UNBOUND 103 (2017) (with Gregory Shaffer)
REPORT
- Parsing Teleglobe: Attorney/Client Privilege Rules for Jointly Represented Corporate Entities, WALL ST. LAWYER, Nov. 2007 (with Lisa M. Schweitzer), Reprinted in SEC. LITIG. REPORT, Jan. 2008 *14
- Activity and Affiliations
- Richard O. Kummert Outstanding Contribution Award, Washington Law Review, 2018
- Pacific Coast Banking School Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship, 2017
- University of Washington Faculty Scholarship Award for Excellence in Law Review Articles, 2016
- Honors and Awards
- Board of Editors, American Journal of International Law, 2020-
- Chair, ASIL International Legal Theory Interest Group, 2023-26
- Vice Chair, 2020-23
- Past American Society of International Law Appointments:
- Executive Council, 2020-23
- Member, ASIL Women in International Law Scholarship Prize Committee, 2022-23
- Co-Chair, ASIL Climate Change Signature Topic Steering Committee, 2020-21
- Vice Chair, Membership Committee, 2019-20
- Book Awards Committee, 2017-18
- Site Selection Committee, 9th & 11th Annual Research Forums
- Co-Chair, 7th Annual Research Forum, 2016
- Program Committee, 110th Annual Meeting, 2016
- Co-Chair, American Branch of the International Law Association’s International Law Weekend Centennial Conference, 2022
- Co-Chair, Transnational Legal Ordering Collaborative Research Network, Law and Society Association, 2022-23
- Supervising Editor, AJIL UNBOUND, 2020-2022
- Managing Editor, 2016-2018
- Associate Managing Editor, 2015-16
- Co-Chair, Junior International Law Scholars Association, 2014-16
- Convener, JILSA Annual Meeting, 2017
- Referee, Law & Society Review
- American Journal of International Law
- Routledge Books
- Social Problems
- Law & Social Inquiry
- Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, and other student-edited journals
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