Professor Ruti G. Teitel's Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice: An American Legacy of Responsibility and Reconciliation provides a wide-ranging look at how American Presidents not only influence foreign policy but leverage their power and influence to to address the challenges of political violence and transition globally. Professor Teitel uses examples throughout American history to demonstrate how executives have acted as visionaries in their approach to transitional justice from George Washington to Barack Obama. In exploring how Presidents advanced peace-making efforts in the past, this book shows how executives of the future might do the same.

About the author

Professor Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law and Co-Director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School, where she also chairs the Institute for Global Law, Justice, and Policy. She is one of the world’s leading experts on international human rights and the foremost thought leader of transitional justice.

Professor Teitel has authored a vast body of work, including four books: Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice (2025); Globalizing Transitional Justice (2014), Humanity’s Law (2011) and Transitional Justice (2002), all published by Oxford University Press. Her first book, Transitional Justice, propelled the transitional justice area and has been translated into many languages, including Spanish and Chinese.

Professor Teitel has taught at many universities around the world, including Yale Law School as a Senior Schell Fellow, University of Connecticut as a Gladstein Professor in Human Rights, and Hebrew University Law School as a Distinguished Fellow, among others. She is also affiliated faculty at NYU’s Master's International Relations programme. She is the founding Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Interest Group on Transitional Justice and Rule of Law, as well as a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Discussants

Dr Iavor Rangelov

Dr Rangelov is Research Fellow and Director of the Civic Ecosystems & Social Innovation Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published extensively on documentation, justice, and memory and has provided strategic advice and support to civic actors and initiatives in Central Asia, East Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He is Ecosystem Strategy Adviser at the Civic Engagement Project and Co-Founder of the Civic Ecosystems Initiative. 

Professor Aeyal Gross

Professor Gross is a member of the Faculty in Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law where he teaches International Law and Constitutional Law. He is a visiting fellow with LSE and IALS and he regularly teaches as Visiting Professor at SOAS, University of London.

He also served as a research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London, as a Visiting Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies in South Africa, and as a Joseph Flom Global Health and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard Law School. Additionally he taught as a visitor in Columbia University and the University of Toronto and in the Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence.  He was also a Fernard Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence.

Professor Gross is the author of numerous articles and the co-editor, with Colleen Flood, of The Right To Health At The Public/Private Divide: A Global Comparative Study (Cambridge University Press,  2014), and the author of The Writing on the Wall: Rethinking the International Law of Occupation (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Professor Larry Kramer

Professor Kramer became President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science in April 2024. He previously served as President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where he led efforts on democracy, economics, climate change, and racial justice. He was also the 15th Dean of Stanford Law School, where he introduced significant educational reforms and expanded the campus.

He has taught at institutions including the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and NYU, and has authored several books, including The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review. Professor Kramer is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the boards of several non-profit organisations.

Moderator

Dr Maria Varaki is a Lecturer in international law and Director of the MA in Peace, Security and International Law at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. Before moving to London she held research positions with the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights in Helsinki and the Law Faculty of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was also an Assistant Professor in International Law at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. Currently she is a Research Associate in 3 Generations of Digital Human Rights, ERC project, 2023-2028, Hebrew University, Faculty of Law.