Beth Van Schaack is Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice of the U.S. Department of State. Prior to her State Department appointment, she was Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law , where she taught and wrote in the areas of human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, public international law, international humanitarian law, and civil procedure . She has been a member of the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Council on International Law and served on the United States interagency delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda, in 2010. For the academic year 2009-2010, she was a Visiting Scholar with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She is the author of several books and articles on human rights, the law of armed conflict, and international criminal law, including a leading textbook in the latter field with Foundation Press.
Ms. Van Schaack joined the Santa Clara faculty from private practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP. While in private practice, Van Schaack practiced in the areas of commercial law, intellectual property, international law, and human rights. Prior to entering private practice, she served as Acting Executive Director and Staff Attorney with The Center for Justice & Accountability, a non-profit law firm in San Francisco dedicated to the representation of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses in U.S., international, and foreign tribunals. She was also served as a law clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Ms. Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School.
