Prof. Louise Ellen Teitz

Louise Ellen Teitz is Professor of Law at Roger Williams Law School and part of the founding faculty. From 2011 to 2014, she served as First Secretary, Hague Conference on Private International Law, The Hague, with primary responsibility for family law areas, including 1980 and 1996 Conventions, and related projects including mediation in family law matters, the "Malta Process" involving Sharia based legal systems, cross-border parentage, unmarried couples, and relocation.

Professor Teitz's academic areas of expertise include private international law, international litigation and dispute resolution, international business transactions, international family law, comparative law, civil procedure, conflict of laws, international aspects of electronic commerce, professional responsibility, and antitrust. She was also Visiting Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law School (Spring 2014).

She is a graduate of Yale College and Southern Methodist University School of Law. After law school, she clerked for Judge John R. Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced law for several years with law firms in Dallas, Texas, and Washington, D.C.  In addition to prior teaching experience at several prestigious U.S. law schools (University of Illinois College of Law, Washington & Lee University School of Law, Rutgers University School of Law- Camden), she has been on the faculties of the University of Konstanz in Germany and the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as teaching at the University of Geneva, University of Bologna, and Catholica University in Lisbon, Portugal. Professor Teitz has also been a Visiting Scholar at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), in Vienna, and at the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) in Rome and lectures frequently abroad. Professor Teitz is the author of two books and numerous articles on these subjects; e.g.,Transnational Litigation (Michie/Lexis 1966 & Supp 1999). She currently is working on a West Casebook entitledComparative Law with Peter Winship and a Second Edition of Transnational Litigation, her earlier treatise.

Professor Teitz is active in the American Bar Association, has chaired several committees and divisions and has served on the Council of the ABA Section of International Law.  She was a member of the ABA Task Force on Electronic Commerce and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She was a member of the United States Delegation to the Hague Conference on Private International Law for the Jurisdiction and Judgments Convention and for the Choice of Court Agreements Convention and is a member of the US Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law. Professor Teitz was also Co-Reporter on the Uniform Law Commission (NCCUSL) Drafting Committee on the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and is a member of the American Bar Association and Uniform Law Commissioners (NCCUSL) Joint Editorial Board on International Law. She has also served as a member of the American Bar Association delegation (as an Observer) to UNICITRAL’s Working Group III on Online Dispute Resolution. Professor Teitz was appointed to be a Uniform Law Commissioner from Rhode Island in June 2015.  

Professor Teitz is a member of the American Law Institute, the International Association of Procedural Law (elected to the Council), The International Academy of Comparative Law, and  ASADIP;  is a U.S. representative to the International Law Association’s International Commercial Arbitration Committee and Protection of Privacy in International and Procedural Law; is on the Executive Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association; and is on the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.