Leila Nadya Sadat

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Leila Nadya Sadat (@leilasadat1) is the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law and longtime Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law. She currently serves as the Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the International Court Prosecutor (since 2012), and was a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 2001 to 2003. She is also a Fellow at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. She spent Fall 2021 as a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School.

Sadat is one of the world’s foremost authorities in the fields of public international law, international criminal law, human rights, and foreign affairs, and has published more than 160 books and articles in leading journals, academic presses, and media outlets throughout the world. She was the first woman selected to hold the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Paris, France (2011) and received an Honorary Doctorate from Northwestern University as well as the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award from Washington University in 2017.

Sadat directs the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a ground-breaking project launched in 2008 to write the world’s first global treaty on crimes against humanity. Sadat is the current President of the International Law Association (American Branch), Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on International Law, and a member of the American Law Institute and the US Council on Foreign Relations.

Sadat holds law degrees from Columbia Law School, Tulane Law School, and the University of Paris I – Sorbonne. She is also on LinkedIn.