For more than 25 years, the Center for International Legal Education at Pitt Law has been dedicated to advancing legal education by focusing on the law that governs interactions in the international, transnational, and comparative legal spheres. The Center achieves this by bringing together a diverse group of faculty, students, and practitioners from diverse cultures to engage in research, teaching, and training. The Center works to further promote the following objectives:
- Enhance the education of all Pitt Law students by supporting the study of international and comparative law through individually tailored opportunities both within and outside the classroom
- Advance the education of lawyers from throughout the world by bringing foreign-trained lawyers to Pitt Law for study and research
- Build the foundations of the rule of law in countries in transition by training their future lawyers and statespeople in the LLM and SJD programs
- Support initiatives to strengthen their institutions of law and legal education
Overall, CILE is committed to advancing the study and practice of international law and contributing to the development of legal systems around the world.
Our Team
Professor Ronald A. Brand, the Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg University Professor of Law, and John E. Murray Faculty Scholar was the founding director of CILE in 1995. He now serves as CILE's Academic Director. For nearly 40 years, Professor Brand has taught courses on international business transactions, international arbitration and litigation, and matters of private international law. He is a former Fulbright Scholar in Belgium, and a former Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna. Brand has received numerous awards, including the ABA Section on International Law's Leonard A. Theberge Award in Private International Law, the University of Pittsburgh Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement, and a Dr. Jur. honoris causa from the University of Augsburg. Brand is a U.S. representative to the Working Group considering a Convention on Parallel Proceedings and regularly works with the US Commerce Department Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) to train students for the the Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Competition.
Professor Charles T. Kotuby Jr., FCIArb, joined the faculty of Pitt Law School in September 2021 and took the role of Executive Director at CILE. A CILE alumnus and double Pitt Alumnus (CAS 1997; JD 2001), Professor Kotuby spent the last twenty years as an international law counsel and arbitration specialist. After clerking for the Honorable Joseph F. Weis Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he joined the law firm of Jones Day in Washington D.C. in 2004 and became a partner in its Global Disputes practice in 2013. Over the course of a twenty-year legal career, he represented clients in dozens of commercial and treaty-based arbitrations, earning himself a Band 1 international arbitration ranking by Chambers USA. Professor Kotuby is also affiliated with the University of Durham Law School in England, and maintains an active international arbitration practice in Washington D.C.
Marie Hamblett is currently CILE's Program Administrator and manages activities relating to the LLM and SJD programs. Marie brings over 25 years of experience previously having served as the Program Director of Leadership Pittsburgh Inc. and the Deputy Director for Finance of Pitt’s Institute of Politics. Marie earned her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1994 and her Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs in 2003.