Law Professor & Old Russia Hand

For over 40 years I have explored the intersection of economics, politics, and law in Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Following my start in the Soviet Internal Branch of the CIA, I enjoyed a wide range of experience across the region. I helped draft the tax codes for newly independent Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, assisted the IMF, World Bank and OECD in the liberalization of the Russian economy, and served as the Counselor for International Law in the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser and and Special Counsel to the General Counsel in the Defense Department. My academic work at the University of Virginia School of Law has given me the foundation to explore these issues and events. While based in Charlottesville, I have lectured on and written about the world economy and international law from Shenzen to The Hague.

Areas of Practice

Russian law, economics, politics, history, and society

 

I have travelled to the Soviet Union and its successor states more than sixty times and worked in many academic institutions in the region as well as advising a host of official and civil-society bodies. My undergraduate and masters degrees were in Russian history and Soviet studies. From graduate school I went to work as an intern in the Soviet Internal branch of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Current Intelligence. Once launched on a legal career, I remained focused on the Soviet Union, as well as the worlds of foreign relations, national security, and intelligence, through my teaching, research, and scholarship at the University of Virginia. During the 1980s I joined, and ultimately became the leader of, a small nonprofit called the Forum for U.S.-Soviet Dialogue that ran an annual conference, alternating between the two countries, for specialists in foreign relations, security, politics, economics, and culture. Many people who became important in the coming decades first made contact there. During the 1990s I threw myself into the post-socialist reform project as a legal and tax expert, working under contracts with U.S. AID, the U.S. Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and OECD, I helped draft the tax codes for Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan and the implementing regulations to the tax code for Kazakhstan. I advised lawyers and businesses on business projects in the region and served as an expert witness in dozens of cases in both domestic courts and international tribunals. You can find my scholarship about all this here. Citations of my work as an expert witness can be found here.

International and foreign relations law

 

As a lawyer focused on the U.S.-Soviet relationship, I worked in international, foreign relations, and national security law. During the 1980s I wrote a series of articles on territoriality and the U.S. Constitution that anticipated the Supreme Court’s later decisions. At the end of that decade I led the U.S. side of a joint U.S.-Soviet research project on international law and international security, for which the MacArthur Foundation provided funding. The book that resulted was published in the U.S. and Moscow during the last week of the Soviet Union’s existence. In the present century I worked as the Counselor for International Law in the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser and as Special Counsel to the General Counsel in the Defense Department. From 1991 until the COVID quarantine I taught these subjects at universities in Moscow, Vienna, Münster, Paris, Lausanne, Melbourne, Sydney, Herzliya, and Shenzhen, as well as visiting Columbia and Duke Law Schools. I was coordinating reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. A list of my publications in these areas can be found here.

Tax law

 

Since the start of my academic career I have done tax law. In the 1980s I worked with the Tax Court to organize a conference comparing judicial review of tax disputes around the world. Later I recruited Tax Court judges to provide technical assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states. During the 1990s I worked with officials, politicians, and practitioners in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, as well as most of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, to help design their tax systems. I also practiced before the Tax Court and advised law firms on tax issues. Since 2005 I have testified in many international investment arbitrations challenging the tax treatment of foreign investors. My scholarship on U.S. tax law can be found here.