Jennifer Trahan is a Clinical Professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, where she directs the Concentration in International Law and Human Rights and convenes the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression. She holds an A.B. from Amherst College, a J.D. from NYU School of Law, and an LL.M. in international law from Columbia Law School. Her teaching covers international law, international justice, transitional justice, U.S. use of force, and war crimes prosecutions in the former Yugoslavia, and she leads field intensives to The Hague, Bosnia, Serbia, and Rwanda. Earlier in her career she served as counsel to the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch and practiced as a litigation associate before entering academia. An internationally recognized expert on international criminal law and the crime of aggression, she has published roughly fifty law review articles and book chapters, along with extensive digests of the case law of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Her book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (Cambridge University Press, 2020), reviewed in Mondial, argues that the use of a permanent member’s veto to block action amid ongoing atrocity crimes can run contrary to obligations under jus cogens, the UN Charter, and fundamental treaty law. The book received the 2020 Book of the Year Award from the American Branch of the International Law Association. She has served as a U.S. representative to that association’s Use of Force Committee and has advised on the creation of a special tribunal on the crime of aggression for Ukraine.
