Duncan B. Hollis

Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law
Co-Faculty Director, Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology
Director, LL.M. and J.D./LL.M. in Transnational Law

Duncan B. Hollis is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law at Temple Law School and co-faculty director of Temple’s Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology (iLIT). His scholarship engages with issues of international law, interpretation, and cybersecurity, with a particular emphasis on treaties, norms, and other forms of international regulation.

Hollis is currently a non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an appointed member of the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law. Together with Oxford University Professor Dapo Akande, he is co-convenor of the Oxford Process on International Law Protections in Cyberspace and its accompanying Compendium. Professor Hollis is also an elected member of the American Law Institute, where he serves as an Adviser on its project to draft a Fourth Restatement on the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. From 2016-2020, he served as a member of the OAS’s Inter-American Juridical Committee, including as Rapporteur for projects on binding and non-binding agreements and improving the transparency of State views on international law’s application to cyberspace. Hollis has spent time as a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School, a Visiting Professor at LUISS Università Guido Carli, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House.

Professor Hollis’s books include The Oxford Guide to Treaties (OUP, 2nd ed., 2020), the first edition of which received the 2013 ASIL Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers; International Law (Aspen, 8th ed., 2023) (with Allen Weiner and Chimène Keitner); and Defending Democracies: Combatting Foreign Election Interference in a Digital Age (OUP, 2021) (with Jens Ohlin). His articles have appeared in various journals and books, including the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Texas Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Harvard Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and Virginia Journal of International Law.

Professor Hollis received an A.B., summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College. In 1996, he completed a joint-degree program, receiving a Masters in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, from Boston College Law School.

Following graduation, Professor Hollis worked for the International Department of Steptoe & Johnson LLP. In 1998, Professor Hollis joined the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked until joining the Temple faculty in 2004. During his tenure at the State Department, Professor Hollis served for several years as the attorney-adviser for treaty affairs, working on legal and constitutional issues associated with the negotiation, conclusion, and implementation of U.S. treaties. Professor Hollis’s practice has included international litigation before the International Court of Justice. In particular, he served as Counsel to the United States in the provisional measures phase of the Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States) and contributed to the U.S. presentation in the Oil Platforms Case (Iran v. United States), with the latter role earning him the State Department’s Superior Honor Award. Today, he continues to participate in investor-state aribrations in various compacities while also advising various international organizations and consulting regularly, including advising the Microsoft Corporation on its Digital Peace agenda.