Elena Baylis

Professor Elena Baylis is an expert in post-conflict and transitional justice. Her scholarship focuses on topics that concern the relationships among communities and between domestic and international law, such as protection and repatriation of cultural objects, reconciliation mechanisms, hybrid criminal courts, the roles of international criminal law professionals, and crimes against humanity within the United States. She served as an expert and primary drafter for the Dakar Guidelines on the Establishment of Hybrid Courts. She has conducted field research and worked on legal education/rule of law initiatives in several post-conflict states, including Kosovo, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her research has been commissioned by the International Center for Transitional Justice and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Baylis also writes about U.S. legislation, law, and policy. As in the international context, her scholarship concerns the relationships between international, national, and local laws and communities. She has published papers on U.S. national security, immigration, marriage equality, and education issues.

Baylis’s scholarship has been published in the Yale Journal of International Law, Berkeley Journal of International Law, Michigan Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, Iowa Law Review, University of Illinois Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Journal of International Law and International Relations, and the Revue européenne du droit, as well as in edited volumes by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, among others. Her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, and she was a founding member of the Intlawgrrls blog.

Baylis holds a joint appointment by courtesy with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. She has held appointments as a Visiting Professor at George Washington University Law School and the University of Connecticut Law School and as a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Before joining the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Baylis taught at Mekelle University Law Faculty in Ethiopia as a Visiting Assistant Professor from the University of Alabama Law School. She practiced civil litigation and advised clients on foreign policy matters with Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. and clerked for U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfalezer.

Baylis is a graduate of Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best paper on international human rights. She earned her BA summa cum laude from the University of Oregon Honors College.