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Gregory Shaffer

Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science
Gregory Shaffer

Expertise:

International Law and International Trade and Investment Law

Background:

Professor Gregory Shaffer is Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Shaffer is a globally recognized expert on law and globalization, with a specialization in international trade law. His publications include ten books and over one hundred articles and book chapters. He is ranked among the top five most-cited scholars in the United States in the field of international law. The work is cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and empirical, addressing such topics as transnational legal ordering, legal realism, hard and soft law, comparative institutional analysis, public-private networks in international trade, the impact of the rise of China and other emerging economies, and the ways trade and investment law implicate domestic regulation and social and distributive policies. His recent book Emerging Powers and the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law (CUP 2021) won the 2022 Chadwick F. Alger Prize of the International Studies Association.

Professor Shaffer is President of the American Society of International Law. He has served on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, was a founding member of the AJIL Unbound Committee, is on the board of multiple other journals around the world, and is a Book Series Editor for Hart-Bloomsbury. He also is founding Board member of the Society of International Economic Law, and is founding coordinator of the Law and Society Association Collaborative Research Network on Transnational and Global Legal Ordering.

He previously was Melvin C. Steen Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, inaugural Wing-Tat Lee Chair at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he also co-directed two university research centers on World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) and the European Union Center of Excellence. He received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College and his J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School. He practiced law in Paris for seven years for Coudert Frères and Bredin Prat, where he was a member of the Paris bar.

He is a recipient of multiple U.S. National Science Foundation awards, was a Shimizu Visiting Professor at London School of Economics, a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute, a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Rome, a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation and at the World Trade Organization, and winner of the Inaugural John Jackson Memorial Prize awarded by the Journal of International Economic Law. He has given invited lectures in over 25 countries.

Professor Shaffer has also published a chapbook of poems, Forest (Artemis, 1998), and his poems have appeared in over a dozen journals.

(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)

  • Governing the Interface of US-China Trade Relations, American Journal of International Law (2021).
  • “Trade Law in a Data-Driven Economy: The Need for Modesty and Resilience,” 20:3 World Trade Review 259-281 (2021).
  • Emerging Powers and the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law (CUP 2021).
  • “Defining Crimes in a Global Age: Criminalization as a Transnational Legal Process,” Law and Social Inquiry (2020).
  • “A New Chinese Economics Law Order?," (2019) (with Henry Gao).
  • “Retooling Trade Law for Social Inclusion,” 2019 University of Illinois Law Review 1 (2019). Condensed versions published as “Reconceiving Trade Law for Social Inclusion,” in The Shifting Landscape of Global Trade Governance, ed. Manfred Elsig (Cambridge University Press, 2019); and “Bargaining over Policy Space as a Complimentary Dimension to Trade Negotiations,” in World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined: A Progressive Agenda for an Inclusive Globalization, eds. Alvaro Santos, Chantal Thomas and David Trubek (Anthem Press, 2019).
  • “How Do We Get Along?: International Economic Law and the Nation-State,” Michigan Law Review (2019). Condensed version reprinted as “Reading Rodrik: A Call for a New Law and Economics for International Law,” in World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined: A Progressive Agenda for an Inclusive Globalization, eds. Alvaro Santos, Chantal Thomas and David Trubek (Anthem Press, 2019).
  • “Constitution-Making as a Transnational Legal Order” (with Tom Ginsburg & Terence Halliday), in Constitution-Making as a Transnational Legal Order (eds. Gregory Shaffer, Tom Ginsburg and Terence Halliday) (Cambridge University Press) (2019).
  • Legal Realism and International Law, in International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers, eds. Jeffrey Dunoff and Mark Pollack, Cambridge University Press (2019).
  • “With, Within, and Beyond the State: The Promise and Limits of Transnational Legal Ordering,” Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law, ed. Peer Zumbansen. Oxford University Press (2019).
  • “From International Law to Transnational Law: from Transnational Law to Transnational Legal Orders,” in Jessup’s Bold Proposal: Critical Engagements with ‘Transnational Law’, ed. Peer Zumbansen (for edited volume on Transnational Law) (2019).
  • Imperfect Alternatives: Institutional Choice and the Reform of Investment Law, 112 American Journal of International Law 361 (2018) (with Sergio Puig).
  • “China’s Rise: How it Took on the U.S. at the WTO,” University of Illinois Law Review (2018).
  • “A Tragedy in the Making? The Decline of Law and the Rise of Power in International Trade Relations,” Yale Journal of International Law Online (2018).
  • “International Organizations and Technologies of Governance,” for International Panel on Social Progress: Rethinking Society for the 21st Century (contributing author) (2018).

Prof. Shaffer’s Scholarly Papers on SSRN


  • Feb. 26, 2022:
    Moderator, Reactions to China’s Rise Outside of Western Europe and America, Global China in an Anxious Age, UCI Forum for the Academy and the Public, Irvine, CA
  • Feb. 16, 2022:
    Featured Speaker, Emerging Powers and the World Trading System, LSE Law, Online
  • Jan. 28, 2022:
    Speaker, Strengthening Sustainability Provisions in Trade Agreements: Focus on Social Dispositions, For a More Sustainable and Responsible Trade Conference, French Treasury on behalf of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Online
  • Nov. 3, 2021:
    Featured Speaker, China in Global Times, UCI Forum for the Academy and the Public, Online
  • Nov. 3, 2021: 
    Featured Speaker, Governing US-China Trade Relations, Asia Law Speaker Series, U.S.-Asia Law Institute, New York University, Online
  • Oct. 7, 2021:
    Featured Speaker, "Emerging Powers and the World Trading System," World Affairs Council of Orange County, Pacific Club, Newport Beach, CA
  • Sept. 30, 2021:
    Featured Speaker, Emerging Powers and the World Trading System – The Past and Future of International Economic Law, World Trade Organization Public Forum 2021, Geneva, Switzerland
  • May 18, 2021:
    Featured Speaker, “Emerging Powers and the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law,” American Society of International Law, Online
  • Jan. 20, 2021:
    Speaker, Emerging Economies and the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law, ABF Speaker Series, Online
  • Nov. 18, 2020:
    Featured Speaker, “A New Chinese Economic Law Order,” U.S.-Asia Law Institute, Online
  • Nov. 20, 2019
    Moderator, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, World Affairs Council of Orange County, Newport Beach, CA
  • Oct. 26, 2019
    Opening Keynote, International Trade Regime for the Data-Driven Economy: How Will Artificial Intelligence Transform International Economic Law, Society of International Economic Law's Asian International Economic Law Network, 6th Biennial Conference, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Oct. 11, 2019
    Speaker, A New Chinese Economic Law Order?, Australian National University School of Regulation and Global Governance, Canberra, Australia
  • Oct. 8, 2019
    Speaker, A New Chinese Economic Law Order, US-Australia Dialogues on International Trade and Resource Governance Law, UNSW, Sydney, Australia 
  • Aug. 22, 2019
    Keynote Speaker, Trade Law: Emerging Powers and the World Trading System, Centro de Estudios Internacionales de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile 
  • May 10, 2019
    Keynote Speaker, Stanford Program in Law and Society, Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA
  • April 26, 2019
    Speaker, “How China Took on the U.S. at the WTO,” UCI CEO Roundtable, Aspen, Colorado
  • Jan. 5, 2019
    Speaker, Law and South Asian Studies and Comparative Law Joint Program - Trade and Investment Across Asia, 2019 AALS Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA
  • Oct. 4, 2018
    Featured Opening Speaker, “What is Interpretation Really About?” Evolutionary Interpretation in Different International Legal systems, University of Geneva Global Studies Institute, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Sept. 28, 2018
    Speaker, Concluding Conference Panel: Advancing Solutions to the Reform of International Investment Law, 13th Annual Columbia International Investment Conference , Columbia University, New York, NY
  • April 13, 2018
    Speaker, Rethinking International Trade and Investment Law, Harvard Law, Cambridge, MA
  • April 9, 2018
    Keynote Speaker, "Projecting Domestic Norms and Models to the International Realm," Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL
  • April 6, 2018
    Moderator, “Challenges and Opportunities for International Trade Law Practice,” The American Society of International Law Annual Meeting, Washington, DC
  • April 6, 2018
    Speaker, “Retooling Trade Agreements for Social Inclusion,” Seminar – International Law and the New Global Political Economy, Georgetown Law, Washington, DC
  • Feb.16–18, 2017
    Speaker, opening panel “The new global politics: Is there space for trade multilateralism?” and closing panel “Addressing non-trade concerns at the WTO,” WTP@20 Conference, New Delhi