Kal Raustiala

Kal Raustiala is the Promise Institute Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law at UCLA Law School and Professor at the UCLA International Institute, where he teaches in the Program on Global Studies. Since 2007 he has served as Director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations. From 2012-2015 he was UCLA’s Associate Vice Provost for International Studies and Faculty Director of the International Education Office.

Professor Raustiala's research focuses on international law, international relations, and intellectual property. He received the Arthur Ross Silver Medal book award of the Council on Foreign Relations for his most recent book, "The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, The United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire" (Oxford, 2023). Other publications include "The Fight Against China’s Bribe Machine,” Foreign Affairs, October 2021 (with Nicolas Barile); “Faster Fashion: The Piracy Paradox and its Perils,” 39 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, (Spring 2021)(with Christopher Sprigman); “NGOs in International Treatymaking,” in Duncan Hollis, ed, THE OXFORD GUIDE TO TREATIES, 2D EDITION (Oxford University Press, 2020); “Hollywood is Running Out of Villains,” Foreign Affairs, August 2020; “Innovation in the Information Age: The United States, China, and the Struggle Over Intellectual Property in the 21st Century,” 58 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (June 2020); and “The Second Digital Disruption: Streaming and the Dawn of Data-Driven Creativity,” NYU Law Review (2019, with Chris Sprigman). His books include Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? The Evolution of Territoriality in American Law (Oxford, 2009) and The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation (Oxford, 2012), written with Chris Sprigman, which has been translated into Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. His biography of the late UN diplomat, civil rights advocate, and UCLA alum Ralph Bunche, The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire, was published in late 2022 by Oxford University Press.

In 2016 Professor Raustiala was elected Vice President of the American Society of International Law. He has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Princeton University, the University of Chicago Law School, Melbourne University in Australia, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2016, he was the Yong Shook Lin Visiting Professor of Intellectual Property at the National University of Singapore. A graduate of Duke University, Professor Raustiala holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego.

Prior to coming to UCLA, Professor Raustiala was a research fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, a Peccei Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems, and an assistant professor of politics at Brandeis University. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Raustiala has served on the editorial boards of International Organization and the American Journal of International Law and is a frequent media contributor whose writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New Republic, the New Yorker, Wired, Slate, the International Herald Tribune and Le Monde. Along with Catherine Amirfar of Debevoise & Plimpton, he is co-host of the American Society of International Law’s International Law Behind the Headlines podcast.