Louise Ellen Teitz

Louise Ellen Teitz is a founding faculty member at Roger Williams University Law School, Bristol, RI. Professor Teitz is a scholar of private international law and international procedural law. Professor Teitz has also taught as an adjunct at NYU Law School. She has served as First Secretary at the Hague Conference on Private International Law, with primary responsibility for family law areas: 1980, 1996 Conventions; related projects on enforcement of family mediation agreements, the "Malta Process" (Sharia-based legal systems), crossborder parentage, unmarried couples, and relocation. Her academic areas of expertise include private international law, international litigation and dispute resolution, international business transactions, international family law, comparative law, civil procedure, and professional responsibility. Professor Teitz has taught at a number of prestigious US law schools, and been on the faculties of the University of Konstanz, Germany and the University of Bern, Switzerland as well as teaching at universities in Geneva, Bologna, and Lisbon(Catholica). She also has been a Visiting Scholar at UNCITRAL in Vienna and at UNIDROIT in Rome and at the Max Planck Institute Luxemburg for International and European Procedural Law.

Her law reform work has ranged from domestic state law to international State law. She has been a member of the US State Department Delegation to the Hague for the Judgments Convention and for the Choice of Court Agreements Convention, and is a member of the US Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law. Professor Teitz is also a Uniform Law Commissioner from Rhode Island. Professor Teitz is also a Uniform Law Commissioner from Rhode Island. She is active in the American Bar Association, has chaired several committees and divisions and served on the Council of the ABA International Law Section. She has served as an Observer (ABA delegation) to UNICITRAL’s Working Group III on Online Dispute Resolution.

Professor Teitz is a member of the American Law Institute, International Academy of Comparative Law, International Association of Procedural Law (elected to the Council); on the Board of the American Branch of the ILA (ABILA) and served as U.S. representative to the ILA’s Business and Human Rights Committee; Protection of Privacy in International Law Committee; and International Commercial Arbitration Committee.

Professor Teitz is the author of two books and numerous articles on international law subjects (e.g., Transnational Litigation 1999)) and she currently is working on a book with Gilles Cuniberti, Peter Mankowski (deceased), and Brooke Marshall Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements: A Commentary (Elgar Press).Her current research focuses on harmonization/unification in several areas and its intersection with procedure. Her most recent articles include: Harmonizing Private International Law and International Private Law through Softlaw: in Honor of Symeon Symeonides, 60 Willamette Law Review (forthcoming Fall 2024); Tying Parallel Proceedings to Judgment Recognition: Harmonizing Cross-Border Dispute Resolution,56 N.Y.U. J Intl Law and Politics 399 (2023).

Professor Teitz graduated cum laude from Yale College and cum laude, Order of the Coif, from SMU Law School. She clerked for Judge John R. Brown, US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

For a fuller biography: https://law.rwu.edu/faculty/louise-ellen-teitz