James Rowles
James Rowles is an author, teacher, and international lawyer. He holds a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in International Law from Harvard University, where he has also taught human rights courses at Harvard Law School as a Lecturer on Law.
Also, he has taught international law courses at Brandeis University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kansas, and the University of Alabama.
In addition, Dr. Rowles has worked as an international lawyer at a leading national law firm and at major global corporations, on matters in Latin America, Europe (including Russia and the Ukraine), the Middle East, and Asia.
As an international development expert, he has worked on judicial reform, human rights, and access to justice in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Russia.
Early in his career, he was a senior staff attorney at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS), in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Rowles graduated “With Great Distinction” (summa cum laude) from Stanford University with an A.B. in History. At Stanford, he won the prize for the best senior honors in history, which dealt with Germans’ reexamination of their past after World War II.
He also received a J.D.(juris Doctor, or Doctor of Law) from Stanford University, where his major concentration was in the areas of international and foreign and comparative law.
After graduating from law school, Dr. Rowles was a Stanford Postgraduate Fellow in Law and Development, working in Costa Rica as a Visiting Professor at the University of Costa Rica Faculty of Law, where he focused on law and development issues, and also as a member of the Costa Rican team of Stanford’s Studies in Law and Development (SLADE) project, a six nation study of law and social change in Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Spain, and Italy.
Upon returning to Stanford, Dr. Rowles continued work on the SLADE project, wrote a master’s thesis based on his research in Costa Rica, and obtained a Master of the Science of Law (JSM=Ll.M.) in Comparative Law and Development.
Dr. Rowles has published two books and numerous articles on international and comparative law subjects. Since 2009, he has been the author of The Trenchant Observer: International Law, Politics, and Security, a blog which chronicles international political developments, with particular attention to the international legal aspects. He also has other blogs, including Foreign Policy Decisions.
A polyglot, Dr. Rowles is fluent in French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, as well as English, and also knows other languages with varying degrees of proficiency.