Masters of the Bench

Professor Cleveland has a long and distinguished career in the service of international law, including as a professor of international law, as the Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser (2009-2011), as Vice Chair and member of the UN Human Rights Committee (2015-2018), and as the independent U.S. member on the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe (2010-19). In November 2023, she was elected by the UN to serve as a judge on the International Court of Justice. 

Cleveland holds the Louis Henkin Chair in Human and Constitutional Rights at Columbia University Law School in New York, where she has been on the faculty since 2007. She has also taught at Oxford University, Sciences-Po University and the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), Leiden University, the European University Institute, the Geneva Graduate Institute, and the University of Tokyo, among others. Professor Cleveland has published widely on international law subjects and has been involved in international law litigation in the United States and abroad. She has served as a Council Member of the International Bar Association’s

Human Rights Institute, and as a Commissioner for the International Commission of Jurists. Professor Cleveland served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University (1987), her law degree from Yale Law School (1992), and a Masters in Commonwealth History from Oxford University (1989), where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.