Chimène Keitner, Professor of Law

Professor Chimène Keitner’s research focuses on cutting-edge issues at the intersection of international law and domestic litigation. She is the author of a book, The Paradoxes of Nationalism, and over twenty articles, essays, and book chapters on questions surrounding the relationship among law, communities, and borders.

Professor Keitner holds a bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard, a JD from Yale, and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. During law school, she was a student director of the immigration clinic, an editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law, and winner of the best team and best oralist prizes in the Yale moot court competition. After law school, she clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and spent three and a half years in private practice in San Francisco, where she represented plaintiffs in employment discrimination and consumer fraud class actions.

Professor Keitner previously served as a consultant for groups including UNESCO, the Greenland Commission on Self-Government, and the Faroese Constitutional Committee on issues relating to cultural diversity and self-determination. In 2005, she served as co-counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First in the first civil suit to challenge the U.S. government's treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, she represented amici Professors of Public International Law and Comparative Law in the Supreme Court case Samantar v. Yousuf. Professor Keitner served as Co-Chair for the American Society of International Law's 105th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, and serves as Co-Chair of the ASIL International Law in Domestic Courts Interest Group.

Courses Taught: International Litigation and Arbitration, Public International Law, Transnational Human Rights Litigation Seminar, and Advanced Topics in International Law Seminar

Expertise: International Law and International Tribunals, International Law in U.S. Courts, Comparative Law, and Complex Litigation

UC Hastings offers you the following unique opportunities... to get a first-rate legal education in the center of San Francisco, surrounded by state and federal trial and appellate courts, and two blocks from the historic building where the U.N. Charter was signed.