Diane Desierto

Diane A. Desierto joined the Law School in January 2021 as full tenured Professor of Law, with a joint appointment as full tenured Professor of Global Affairs at the Keough School of Global Affairs. At the Law School, Desierto is the Faculty Director of the LLM Program in International Human Rights Law, and Founding Director of the Notre Dame Law School Global Human Rights Clinic. At the Keough School, she is active as a Faculty Fellow in five Institutes (Klau, Kellogg, Liu, Pulte, Nanovic), and Co-Principal Investigator of the Notre Dame Reparations Design and Compliance Lab.

 

Desierto teaches, publishes, and practices in all areas of public and private international law, international human rights law, international dispute settlement, international arbitration, maritime security, comparative law, and ASEAN Law.

 

She authored, co-authored, and/or edited 8 books (with leading presses Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Martinus Nijhoff, Routledge, West Publishing, Kluwer Law, among others), 71 law review articles with leading international law journals (such as, among others, European JIL, Columbia JTL, NYU JILP, Berkeley JIL, Yale JIL, Georgetown JIL, UPenn JIL, Emory ILR, Asian JIL, Journal of World Investment and Trade), 2 interdisciplinary journal articles, 35 book chapters with leading university presses in the US and Europe, 9 amicus briefs, 8 book reviews, 87 shorter articles with peer-reviewed online international law journals such as EJIL:Talk! and Kluwer Arbitration, as well as numerous policy studies and collaborative reports for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Development Programme, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union External Action Service, the Asian Development Bank among others. Desierto's scholarship has been cited by multiple foreign and international courts and arbitral tribunals, as well as by the Supreme Court of the Philippines.

 

Desierto serves in multiple editorial boards (Global Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence, Vienna Journal of International Constitutional Law, among others) and completed 12 years of service in the editorial board of European Journal of International Law and EJIL:Talk!. She has served multiple Visiting Professor appointments (Mexico, Spain, the Philippines, Paris), received multiple senior research fellowships (Stanford CASBS, Singapore, Berlin, Heidelberg, Michigan, Hawaii), as well as international awards for her work as international counsel. Desierto remains active as international arbitration and litigation counsel at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, Singapore International Arbitration Centre, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Supreme Court of the Philippines. She is a Listed Arbitrator at the British Virgin Islands Arbitration Centre, and has also served as Chair-Rapporteur of the Expert Group on the Right to Development at the United Nations in Geneva.

 

Desierto received her JSD (Doctor of the Science of Law, 2011) and LLM (Master of Laws, 2009) from Yale Law School, where she was Editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, awarded the Ambrose Gherini Prize in International Law, and graduated with honors in all courses. She received her JD (2004, cum laude, class salutatorian) and BSc in Economics (2000, summa cum laude, class valedictorian) from the University of the Philippines, where she was nationally awarded the Justice Cortes Prize in Constitutional Law, the Gerardo Sicat Award for Best Economics Thesis, the Pi Gamma Mu Most Outstanding Social Science Scholar award, and 8 years of Phi Kappa Phi honors. In 2010 and 2011, Desierto clerked for H.E. Judge Bruno Simma and H.E. Judge Bernardo Sepulveda-Amor at the International Court of Justice, the Hague, Netherlands.

 

Desierto's work has been featured in Notre Dame's 2020 Women Lead, 2022 All Faculty Team, 2024 Notre Dame Magazine, and the 100th episode (Fighting to Defend Human Rights) in Notre Dame's What Would You Fight For? series.

International Law

Global Human Rights Clinic

Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Directed Readings (on all areas of public or private international law, international arbitration and dispute settlement, international human rights law)

JSD Supervision, LLM Thesis Supervision

Journal of International and Comparative Law