Professor Ronald Brand
University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Ronald A. Brand is the Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg Professor of Law and academic director of the Center for International Legal Education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He has taught and lectured in many countries, and in 2011 delivered a special course on private international law at The Hague Academy of International Law. He is a former Fulbright Scholar in Belgium, a former fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, a recipient of the ABA Section on International Law’s Leonard A. Theberge Award in Private International Law, and a recipient of a Dr. Jur. honoris causa from the University of Augsburg.  Brand was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Special Commissions and Diplomatic Conference of The Hague Conference on Private International Law that concluded the 2005 Convention on Choice of Court Agreements, and has been a member of the U.S. Delegation to The Hague Conference Working Group on Judgments, which has prepared a draft Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, to be considered by a Hague Special Commission beginning in summer 2016.

Professor Benjamin Davis
University of Toledo College of Law

Professor Benjamin Davis, University of Toledo College of Law, has been a faculty member since 2003, tenured since 2008, and a full professor since 2015. He is a graduate of Harvard College (B.A.) and Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School (J.D./M.B.A.), where he was articles editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. Davis teaches in the areas of Contracts, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Arbitration, Public International Law, and International Business Transactions.

Prior to joining the faculty at Toledo, Davis was an associate professor at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law (now Texas A&M School of Law). Between 1983 and 1986, he worked in Paris as a development consultant in West Africa, and as a strategic business consultant with Mars and Co. in Europe. In 1986, he became the American legal counsel at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, where he supervised directly or indirectly over 5,000 international commercial arbitration and mediation cases, made filings before courts around the world on behalf of the ICC, assisted with the drafting of arbitration laws in countries such as India and Sri Lanka, and led conferences in Eastern and Western Europe, North America, and Asia. In 1996, he was promoted to director, conference programmes, and manager of the Institute of World Business Law, where he organized training sessions on international contracts, dispute resolution, project finance, and electronic commerce.

He is the creator of fast-track international commercial arbitration and the creator of the International Competitions for Online Dispute Resolution (ICODR) by which students from around the world competed in online negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and litigation. He is a board member of the Society of American Law Teachers, vice chair of the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution, and a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He has spoken around the world and written widely on a range of topics.

Professor Christopher Drahozal
University of Kansas School of Law

Christopher R. Drahozal is the John M. Rounds Professor of Law and associate dean for research and faculty development at the University of Kansas School of Law. He is an associate reporter for the Restatement of the U.S. Law on International Commercial Arbitration and is on the board of directors of Arbitrator Intelligence, a nonprofit co-founded by Penn State Law professor Catherine Rogers that is working to improve the process for selecting international arbitrators. He is serving as a special adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for matters related to the use of arbitration clauses in consumer financial services contracts and was chair of the Arbitration Task Force of the Searle Civil Justice Institute.

Drahozal has written extensively on the law and economics of arbitration. He has authored a casebook on commercial arbitration published by Lexis Publishing (now in its third edition) and a co-edited a book on empirical research on international commercial arbitration published by Kluwer Law International. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Texas Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, Law and Contemporary Problems, and the International Review of Law and Economics, among others. He has made presentations on arbitration law and practice throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Prior to teaching, Drahozal was in private law practice in Washington, D.C., and served as a law clerk for the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, the United States Supreme Court, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Professor David Larson
Mitchell Hamline University School of Law

Professor David Allen Larson is a professor of law, a senior fellow at the Mitchell | Hamline Dispute Resolution Institute, and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He teaches Arbitration, Cyber Skills and Dispute Resolution, Employment Discrimination Law, Employment Law, and Labor Law. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Employment (CCH Inc.), served as an arbitrator for the Omaha Tribe and numerous other civil disputes, and was a Hearing Examiner for the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission. Larson has more than 60 legal publications and has made more than 150 professional presentations in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, England, Ireland, Sweden, and the United States.

A leader in the American Bar Association, his current assignments include an appointment as co-chair of the Section of Dispute Resolution Technology Committee (2015 - ) and chair for the ABA Law Student Division Arbitration Competition (2010-12, 2014-15). He continues to serve as a member of that ABA subcommittee. He also was a member of the ABA E-Commerce and ADR Task Force. From 1990 to 1991, he was the professor-in-residence at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C., serving primarily in the Office of General Counsel, Appellate Division, and working with the Office of Legal Counsel as they drafted and revised the Regulations and Interpretive Guidance for the Americans with Disabilities Act. Larson previously practiced with a large litigation law firm in Minneapolis.

Professor Petra Butler
Victoria University of Wellington

Professor Petra Butler is the associate professor at the Victoria University School of Law and co-director of the Centre for Small States, Queen Mary University of London. Butler specializes in domestic and international human rights, public and private comparative law, and private international law with an emphasis on international commercial contracts. In addition, she teaches the law of unjust enrichment. She has published extensively in those areas, including, together with Andrew Butler, The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990: a commentary (Lexis Nexis, 2nd ed, 2015) and, together with the late Professor Peter Schlechtriem, UN Law on International Sales (Springer, 2008, 2nd edition forthcoming 2016). Butler advises public and private clients and has been involved in some of New Zealand's recent high-profile cases. She is a member of a number of advisory boards of human rights NGOs.

Butler is a graduate of the University of Göttingen and was a clerk at the South African Constitutional Court. Before joining Victoria University, she worked for the Ministry of Justice's Bill of Rights/Human Rights Team. She was a member of the National Advisory Council to the Human Rights Commission for the National Plan of Action for Human Rights. In 2004, she was the Holgate Fellow, Grey College, Durham University. In 2008, she held a senior fellowship at the University of Melbourne and was the Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP scholar-in-residence in 2015.

Butler is New Zealand's CLOUT correspondent for the CISG and the United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts. She has held visiting appointments inter alia at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law (Beijing), the University of Melbourne, the University of Adelaide, Bucerius Law School (Hamburg), Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona), and Northwestern University Law School (Chicago). She also has been involved in various roles in the Vis Moot for more than 10 years.

Mr. Mark Bravin
Winston & Strawn LLP

Mr. Mark Bravin is senior partner at Winston & Strawn in Washington, D.C., specializing in international arbitration and cross-border litigation. He also is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School, where he teaches Investor-State Dispute Settlement. He has represented sovereign governments and private parties in international disputes since 1979.

Bravin recently won a judgment for McKesson Corp. in its epic, 30-year federal court litigation with Iran over compensation for an expropriated investment under the U.S.-Iran Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation. He currently represents a U.S. citizen in litigation against Germany for expropriation damages under a similar U.S.-German FCN treaty. He is part of Ecuador’s defense team in a $9 billion treaty arbitration with Chevron Corp. and is lead counsel in Ecuador’s challenge to Chevron’s enforcement of a $96 million arbitration award under the New York Convention. 

Professor Hiro Aragaki
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Hiro Aragaki is an associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. His scholarly interests cluster around the intersection of contract and procedure. His research on arbitration has appeared in the NYU Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review, among others. His work in this area has also been the springboard for several amicus briefs he has written, including to the Supreme Court in the groundbreaking case of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. In addition to his academic work, Aragaki serves as an arbitrator and mediator, trains judges and lawyers internationally, and has provided advice on the design of effective court-connected ADR programs in Bangladesh and Ghana. 

Professor Jeffrey Dasteel
UCLA School of Law

Professor Jeffrey Dasteel teaches International Commercial Arbitration at UCLA Law School and is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a member of the executive committee of the North American Branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and co-chair of the Southwest Arbitration Subcommittee for the United States Council for International Business. Dasteel is a former member of the ICC Commission on Arbitration, former co-chair of the ADR Committee of the Litigation Section of the California State Bar, and a retired litigation and international arbitration partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He is the author or co-author of numerous publications, including International Commercial Arbitration for Law Students (2nd ed., 2014); “Crossing Borders: The Legislature Should Allow Parties in International Arbitrations in California to Choose Their Preferred Attorneys,” Los Angeles Lawyer (November 2013) (With Natalia De La Parra Ferreiro); “California Arbitration Act Update: CCP § 1281.2(c) After AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion,” California Business Law Practitioner, Vol. 28/Number 2 (Spring 2013); and “Arbitration Agreements that Discriminate in the Selection and Appointment of Arbitrators,” 11 Rich. J. Global L. & Bus. 383 (2012).

Professor Patricia Shaughnessy
University of Stockholm School of Law

Patricia Shaughnessy, a tenured professor, directs the Master of International Commercial Arbitration Law Program (LL.M.) at Stockholm University and teaches and researches in related fields. She chairs the Arbitration and Dispute Resolution Section of the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law at Stockholm University. Shaughnessy is the vice-chair of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC), having served on its board since 2006. She has been an active member of the SCC committees that have drafted the SCC Rules. Recently, she has served as a government-appointed expert in the committee that has proposed revisions to the Swedish Arbitration Act. She has acted as an arbitrator and expert, and as a consultant. She has led numerous projects related to commercial law and dispute resolution in a number of countries.

Prior to her academic career, she practiced law for 10 years in a U.S. law firm specialized in civil and commercial litigation, was an adjunct professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii, and was a member of the Board of Continuing Education of the Hawaii Bar Association. She has served as a U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Fellow, working with the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. She has been appointed a Senior Fulbright Specialist and has taught and held lectures at a number of universities and organizations.