Sadat received her B.A. from Douglass College, her J.D. from Tulane Law School (summa cum laude) and holds graduate degrees from Columbia University School of Law (LLM, summa cum laude) and the University of Paris I – Sorbonne (diplôme d’études approfondies). She is bilingual in French and English.
As a scholar, teacher, and author, Sadat has contributed to the establishment and study of the International Criminal Court (ICC). She was a delegate to the U.N. Preparatory Committee and to the 1998 Diplomatic Conference in Rome which established the ICC, represented the government of Timor-Leste at the 8th Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC, and served as a delegate for the International Law Association, American Branch at the 2010 ICC Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda.
Sadat is known for her work in Public International Law and human rights. More recently, she has been invited to write on topics ranging from the U.S. use of drones, the legal categorization of the conflict in Syria, the U.S. war on terror and its classification of others as "unlawful enemy combatants"
From 2001-2003 she served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She was nominated by then Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt and appointed by Congress. The 9-member Commission was established by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to advise the President and the Department of State on Issues of International Religious Freedom, both generally and with regard to particular countries.
Sadat currently serves as Vice-President of the International Law Association(American Branch) and the International Association of Penal Law(AIDP), and is a member of the American Law Institute. She has also served as a member of the Executive Council, Executive Committee, Program Committee and Awards Committee for the American Society of International Law and is the Book Review Editor for the American Journal of Comparative Law.
Prior to entering law teaching, Sadat practiced law for five years in Paris, France, and clerked for Judge Albert Tate, Jr. in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. She was also a stagiaire at the Cour de Cassation and Conseil d’Etat.
Sadat has published more than 75 articles and books. She also has written many op-eds and is a regular contributor on ASIL Blog and Intlawgrrls Blog. She also authors the blog Windows on the World and contributes to the blog Lex lata, lex ferenda.
Sadat is widely considered one of the leading international legal experts' on crimes against humanity. Her first peer-review paper, which determined if she would get tenure, has become the definitive source on the case of Paul Touvier, a Nazi collaborator in Occupied France during World War II who, in 1994, became the first Frenchman to be convicted of crimes against humanity. She is the Chairwoman of the Steering Committee of The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, the first concerted effort to address the gap that exists in international criminal law by enumerating a comprehensive international convention on crimes against humanity. In this role she spearheaded the drafting of the Proposed International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity as her role as director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative.
She has lectured widely on this topic, advocating for civil society and state governments to support a new global treaty, including at Misericordia University, Wayne Law School, John Burroughs High School, the School of Human Rights Research in the Netherlands, the 2013 NAFSA Annual Conference & Expo in St. Louis, The American Foreign Law Association in New York, Indiana University and University of Minnesota Law School. In April 2015, Leila Sadat presented on the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. The presentation was attended by the President of the Portuguese Supreme Court, Justice António Henriques Gaspar, Justice Maria dos Prazeres Beleza, also from the Supreme Court of Justice and the Portugal’s Attorney General Joana Marques Vidal. Prominent members of the Academy were also present, including the Dean of the Lisbon School of Law of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Professor Jorge Pereira da Silva, Professor Germano Marques da Silva, a former Dean of Lisbon School of Law and a Criminal Law Professor, Professor Luís Barreto Xavier, the Dean of Católica Global School of Law and Professor Gonçalo Matias, Director of Católica Global’s Transnational Law Program, and special adviser to Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva.
Awards and honors
Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair, Spring 2011, University of Cergy-Pontoise (Paris)
Outstanding Book of the Year Award (2011), Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity, International Association of Penal Law (American Branch)
Outstanding Article of the Year Award (2010), "The Nuremberg Paradox," International Association of Penal Law (American Branch)
Outstanding Article of the Year Award (2006), "Exile, Amnesty and International Law," International Association of Penal Law (American Branch)
Outstanding Book of the Year (2003), The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law, International Association of Penal Law (American Branch)
Israel Treiman Faculty Fellow, 2003-2004
United States Institute of Peace Grant Recipient, 2000-2001
Israel Treiman Faculty Fellow, Spring 1999
Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity (Leila Nadya Sadat, ed., Cambridge 2011)
The Theory and Practice of International Criminal Law: Essays in Honor of M. Cherif Bassiouni (Leila N. Sadat, Michael P. Scharf, eds., Martinus Nijhoff 2008)
International Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (3rd ed., Carolina, 2006) (with Bassiouni, Paust, et al.)
The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law: Justice for the New Millennium (Transnational, 2002)
International Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (2nd ed., Carolina, 2000) (with Bassiouni, Paust, et al.)
Model Draft Statute for the International Criminal Court Based on the Preparatory Committee's Text to the Diplomatic Conference, Rome, June 15-July 17, 1998, 13ter Nouvelles Études Pénales (Leila Sadat Wexler, special ed. 1998)
Articles and essays
"The Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials: Seventy Years Later" in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
"Avoiding the Creation of a Gender Ghetto in International Criminal Law," 11 International Criminal Law Review 655 (2011) (symposium in honor of Judge Patricia Wald)
"Beyond Kampala: Complementarity and the International Criminal Court: The Next Steps for U.S. Engagement," ASIL Discussion Paper Series (November 2010)
"On Legal Subterfuge and the So-Called 'Lawfare' Debate," 43 Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 153 (2011)
"A Rawlsian Approach to International Criminal Justice and the International Criminal Court," 19 Tulane Journal of International & Comparative Law 261 (2010) (Eberhard P. Deutsch Distinguished Lecture on International Law)
"On the Shores of Lake Victoria: Africa and the Review Conference for the International Criminal Court," Africa Legal Aid Quarterly (March 2010)
"The Nuremberg Paradox," 58 American Journal of Comparative Law 151 (2010) (Selected for the Princeton/Illinois Workshop in Comparative Law (2009))
"Transjudicial Dialogue and the Rwandan Genocide: Aspects of Antagonism and Complementarity," 22 Leiden Journal of International Law 543 (2009) reprinted in Proceedings of the Second International Humanitarian Law Dialogs 123 (ASIL 2009)
"A Presumption of Guilt: The Unlawful Enemy Combatant and the U.S. War on Terror," 37 Denver J. Int'l L. 539 (2009) (The 2008 Henry & Mary Bryan Lecture)
"Shattering the Nuremberg Consensus: U.S. Rendition Policy and International Criminal Law," 3 Yale Journal of International Affairs 65 (2008)
"Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Other Nightmares from the War on Terror," 75 George Washington University Law Review 1200 (2007) (distributed as part of the "basic materials" to every team (~ 600 worldwide) in the 2007 Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition)
"Ghost Prisoners and Black Sites: Extraordinary Rendition under International Law," 37 Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 309 (2006), reprinted in part in 15 ILSA Law Quarterly 9 (2007)
"Exile, Amnesty and International Law," 81 Notre Dame Law Review 955 (2006) (reprinted in part in Louis Henkin, Laurence Helfer, et al., Human Rights, (2d ed. 2008))
"An American Vision for Global Justice: Taking the Rule of (International) Law Seriously," 4 Washington University Global Studies Law Review 1 (2005)
"Summer in Rome, Spring in The Hague, Winter in Washington? U.S. Policy Towards the International Criminal Court," 21 Wisconsin International Law Journal 557 (2004)
"Do All Arabs Really Look Alike?," 50 Wayne State Law Review 69 (2004) (symposium honoring Edward M. Wise)
"Terrorism and the Rule of Law," 3 Washington University Global Studies Law Review 135 (2004) (reprinted with updates in The International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, August 29, 2007: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Hague Rules of 1907 (American Society of International Law 2008))
"The Least Dangerous Branch: Six Letters from Publius to Cato in Support of the International Criminal Court," 35 Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 339 (2003)
"International Criminal Law and Alternative Modes of Redress," Proceedings, Kiel Symposium on International Law (Summer 2002)
"Redefining Universal Jurisdiction," 35 New England Law Review 241 (2001) (lead symposium article) (reprinted in Paul Schiff Berman, The Globalization of International Law 241 (2006))
"The New International Criminal Court: An Uneasy Revolution," 88 Georgetown Law Journal 381 (2000) (with S. Richard Carden) (reprinted in part in Mark Janis & John Noyes, International Law,Cases and Commentary 418 (3rd ed. 2006))
"Custom, Codification and Some Thoughts About the Relationship Between the Two: Article 10 of the ICC Statute," 35 DePaul Law Review (2000) (festschrift for M. Cherif Bassiouni).
"Observations on the Consolidated ICC Text Before the Final Session of the Preparatory Committee," 13bis Nouvelles Études Pénales (Leila Sadat Wexler, special ed. 1998)
"Prosecutions for Crimes Against Humanity in French Municipal Law: International Implications," American Society of International Law, Proceedings of the 91st Annual Meeting 270 (1997)
"International Law Association (American Branch) First Committee Report on Jurisdiction, Definition of Crimes and Complementarity," 13 Nouvelles Études Pénales 159 (Spring 1997) (also published in 25 Denver Journal of International Law & Politics 211)
"The Proposed Permanent International Criminal Court: An Appraisal," 29 Cornell International Law Journal 665 (1996)
"Official English, Nationalism and Linguistic Terror: A French Lesson," 71 Washington Law Review 285 (1996)
"Reflections on the Trial of Vichy Collaborator Paul Touvier for Crimes against Humanity in France," 20 JOURNAL OF LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY 191 (1995)
"The Interpretation of the Nuremberg Principles by the French Court of Cassation: From Touvier to Barbie and Back Again," 32 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 289 (1994) (reprinted in Bassiouni, Paust, et al., International Criminal Law, 1st, 2nd, & 3rd editions)
