Faculty
You can achieve the LLM in Transnational Business Practice degree in three different ways. One is through two semesters of study on the Pacific McGeorge campus in Sacramento; another is through the collaborative program that entails one semester of study at Pacific McGeorge and one semester at the University of Salzburg; and the third is through a semester of study in Sacramento, coupled with an internship semester consisting of six weeks of pre-internship seminars in Sacramento, and a ten- to twelve-week internship with an international law firm in one of about 40 countries.
Because there are three tracks leading to the same degree, there are also three different groups of distinguished international faculty. These include the international faculty at Pacific McGeorge; the international faculty at the University of Salzburg; and the pre-internship faculty, which consists of distinguished practitioners, academics and judges from a variety of countries. The backgrounds and achievements of the various professors who teach in each of these three tracks are shown below.
Pacific McGeorge Sacramento International Faculty:
Professor Gevurtz is the Director of the Pacific McGeorge Global Center for Business and Development. He is spearheading a revolutionary effort to "globalize" the curriculum throughout legal education in the United States. This includes having conceived of, and acting as the Series Editor for, the "Global Issues" series of books published by Thomson-West---which are designed to facilitate the introduction of international and comparative law issues in core law school courses. Professor Gevurtz' principal area of scholarship and teaching is corporate law. His treatise, CORPORATION LAW, is widely cited both in the United States and abroad. Professor Gevurtz also has written a number of other books and numerous law review articles, including on topics of comparative corporate and securities laws and foreign corruption. He has taught or lectured in Athens, Lisbon, London, Nancy, Salzburg and Seoul, and has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall). Prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1982, Professor Gevurtz practiced with the internationally recognized law firm of O'Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles. Courses: Antitrust, Agency and Unfair Trade Practices
Professor Yelpaala is the Director of the Pacific McGeorge Institute for Global Business. He is an expert in international business law, who is fluent in three languages. Professor Yelpaala has authored or edited books and law review articles, which address such topics as the Lome Conventions, foreign direct investment, licensing agreements, drafting and enforcing contracts, international conflicts of laws, and global product distribution. Professor Yelpaala is a consultant on various aspects of international business transactions and industrial policy to several foreign governments. Prior to joining the faculty at Pacific McGeorge in 1981, Professor Yelpaala was a state attorney for three years in his native Ghana, and a lecturer in law at the University of Wisconsin. Courses: Advanced International Business Transactions, Antitrust, Transnational Litigation, Conflict of Laws, Foreign Investment and Development
Professor Weber is the founding Director of the Pacific McGeorge Institute for Sustainable Development. Professor Weber has two principal research interests: dispute resolution processes and natural resources law. Much of his current work looks at the intersection of those two research interests. As an environmental law advisor, he has studied forestry disputes in Mexico for the World Wildlife Fund and in Canada for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Currently, he is leading a project to revise the FSC dispute resolution protocol. He is also researching the Friendly Settlement practices in the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter American Court of Human Rights. He has trained Chilean prosecutors and defenders in negotiation skills. Professor Weber is also an associate mediator with the Center for Collaborative Policy, where he has helped mediate complex natural resources disputes. Before joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1990, Professor Weber clerked for Justice Edmond Burke, Alaska Supreme Court, practiced with a leading California water resources law firm, and was a senior attorney for the California Court of Appeal. He is a co-founder of the California Water Law and Policy Reporter. Professor Weber has authored more than a half-dozen law review articles, mostly on water resources law, and four books. Course: Alternative Dispute Resolution
Professor Carter is the Director of the Pacific McGeorge Institute for Legal Infrastructure. She is a well recognized expert on domestic and international criminal law and criminal procedure. In the last few years, her research has mainly focused on international issues. She conducted a research project in Rwanda on the "Gacaca" trials (lay tribunals hearing genocide cases) in 2005, following which she lectured at a workshop on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She was Co-Director of the Brandeis Institute for International Judges' program on Challenges for International Justice held in Dakar, Senegal, and a Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. She has written books and articles in the areas of criminal law and criminal procedure, recently including GLOBAL ISSUES IN CRIMINAL LAW, which introduces international and comparative law issues into criminal law courses. Before joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1985, Professor Carter worked as a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department and with the Salt Lake City Legal Defender Association, where she tried a wide variety of criminal cases from theft to murder.
Professor McCaffrey is one of the world's foremost experts on international water resources law. Professor McCaffrey has not only written about international law, but, through his work on the United Nation's International Law Commission (which seeks to codify international law), he has actually written international law. He has served as Chairman of the ILC and as the Commission's "special rapporteur" for international watercourses, in which role he guided the Commission's effort that formed the basis of the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. Professor McCaffrey currently serves as legal consultant to the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework, an UN-sponsored project to forge a multinational agreement on utilization of the Nile's water resources. Professor McCaffrey has also argued in front of The World Court, taught environmental law courses in German at Swiss universities, advised the U.S. State Department, and represented foreign governments in river-use disputes---for which service he was awarded the order of the white dual cross by the government of Slovakia. A member of the Pacific McGeorge faculty since 1977, he has published a number of books and numerous articles. Courses: Conflict of Laws, International Water Resources Law Seminar, The Law of Treaties, Transnational Litigation
Professor Dajani's legal, political, and diplomatic skills placed him squarely in the center of one of the world's most troubled regions: the Middle East, and his scholarship continues to build upon this experience. As advisor to United Nations Special Envoy Terje Roed-Larson from 2001 to 2003, Professor Dajani was intimately involved in a range of multilateral initiatives to foster peace in the region, including the Middle East Roadmap. Prior to joining this UN effort, Professor Dajani was Senior Legal Advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel. In that capacity, he gained unique experience in preparing and negotiating complex agreements covering a variety of contested matters including borders, security, law enforcement, trade and financial issues. Professor Dajani's private sector experience includes work at the Washington, D.C. offices of Sidley & Austin and Steptoe & Johnson, and he clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals. At Yale Law School, Professor Dajani was General Director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Project. Professor Dajani joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2004. Courses: Foreign Investment and Development, International Organizations, and Immigration & Nationality
Since joining the faculty at Pacific McGeorge in 1984, Professor Davies has specialized in teaching and writing about torts and civil rights. She is currently intrigued by comparative law topics and foreign legal systems, which is not surprising for someone is who fluent in Spanish and Italian. She recently joined with an author of a leading tort law casebook to write GLOBAL ISSUES IN TORT LAW, which introduces comparative law materials into tort law courses, and was selected to present a paper on Ghanaian customary law before the Section on Torts and Compensation Systems of the American Association of Law Schools. Professor Davies is a member of the American Law Institute and the author of pair of books and numerous law review articles dealing with tort law and civil rights.
Professor Florestal works and writes in the areas of international trade and development, with a particular focus on one of the most difficult challenges in the world trade arena: the economic development of Africa. Prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty, she served as Senior Legal Advisor working with the Cape Verde government to prepare that country to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). She has been a Visiting Researcher in Africa, lecturing at a number of institutions and working with the African Development Bank to mainstream trade issues in their lending practices and to train African trade officials on substantive aspects of WTO law. At the invitation of the State Department, Professor Florestal has designed and implemented programs in Nigeria and Ethiopia working with those governments on good governance issues and integrating developing countries into the world trading system. Previously, Professor Florestal was Managing Attorney for Africa in the Commercial Law Development Program at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where she administered a multimillion dollar technical assistance program in North and West Africa. From 1998 to 2000 she was Assistant General Counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, where, as lead attorney and head of the U.S. delegation for safeguards measures, she presented arguments before WTO dispute settlement panels. She has written a number of articles on international trade and development. Professor Florestal joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2004. Courses: EU law, and Advanced International Trade Law
Professor Jacobs has been a professor at Pacific McGeorge since 1993. During this time, she has authored a substantial and important body of scholarship on constitutional doctrine, governance and national security. In the area of national security, Professor Jacobs's scholarship has focused on dealing with the threat of bioterrorism. Recently, Professor Jacobs' has turned her scholarly attention to issues of comparative constitutional law. She is the co-author of Global Issues in Constitutional Law and Global Issues in Freedom of Speech and Religion, which introduce international and comparative law materials into Constitutional Law and First Amendment courses. Professor Jacobs also serves as the Director of the Pacific McGeorge Capital Center on Government Law & Policy, dedicated to studying issues of federalism and government structure and aiding government policymakers who must navigate their complexities. Before this appointment, Professor Jacobs served as the Director of the Pacific McGeorge Institute for Development of Legal Infrastructure. Professor Jacobs has taught in Hangzhou and London. Prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty, Professor Jacobs served as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
One of the leading experts on civil rights issues in the United States, Professor Landsberg's scholarship and activities have moved into the international and comparative law realm in recent years. His recent scholarship includes the books GLOBAL ISSUES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW and GLOBAL ISSUES IN EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION, which look at the international and comparative law issues involved in these subject areas. He is also the Program Director for the Pacific McGeorge Rule of Law Program in China, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In this role, Professor Landsberg has spearheaded a revolutionary approach to rule of law initiatives, which works by educating legal educators in developing countries in methods of instruction, thereby leveraging its impact. He has taught in Kampala, Salzburg, and Suzhou, and has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall). Prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1986, Professor Landsberg had a distinguished two decades of service in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and has drawn upon this background in writing a number of important books and articles on civil rights. In 1993, Professor Landsberg was called upon to briefly interrupt his teaching at Pacific McGeorge in order to serve in the No. 2 post in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division as Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Professor Main is an expert in the field of domestic and international civil procedure with numerous publications, including being a co-author of a leading civil procedure casebook. In the international arena, he is the author of GLOBAL ISSUES IN CIVIL PROCEDURE, the first book in the "Global Issues" series designed to introduce international and comparative law issues into core courses such as Civil Procedure, and is the co-author, with Professor Stephen McCaffrey, of TRANSNATIONAL LITIGATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE, published by Oxford University Press. Professor Main has taught or lectured in Barcelona, London, and Salzburg. Prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2000, Professor Main was a litigator in the trial department at Hill & Barlow in Boston, Massachusetts, and was the Associate General Counsel at Platinum Equity. He clerked for Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
An internationally recognized expert on bank regulation and on economic sanctions, Dr. Malloy has authored or edited over 70 books and book-length supplements, as well as numerous scholarly articles, in such fields as banking regulation, economic sanctions, international banking, international trade, and public international law. Prior to entering academia, Professor Malloy served as a Research Associate at the Institute of International Law & Economic Development in Washington, D.C., as an attorney-adviser with the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and as Special Counsel (Disclosure and Enforcement Policy) at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dr. Malloy joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1996, having been a professor on the faculty of the Fordham University School of Law. He has served on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, as Chair of the Committee on Economic Sanctions of the Internation¬al Law Association (American Branch), as Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Banking Law Anthology, published by the International Library, and is a member of the Athens Institute for Education and Research. Dr. Malloy is a frequent consultant to the U.S. government on issues involving bank regulatory policy and international economic sanctions, and recently testified before the British House of Lords on the subject of economic sanctions. Courses: International Banking, International Trade
Professor Manolakas, whose teaching and writing focuses on tax law, joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1978. Her recent scholarship, in a series of articles co-authored with Catherine Brown of the University of Calgary, looks at issues relating to international tax law, the interpretation of tax treaties, and a comparison of the tax systems of the NAFTA countries. Professor Manolakas has also written a number of book chapters and articles dealing with domestic tax and marital property law issues. Course: Taxation (U.S.) of International Transactions
Professor Paton joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2008, from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he served as Assistant Professor from 2004 to 2008. In addition to his academic career, Professor Paton was a Senior Manager and Legal Counsel at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP; Justice & Social Policy Advisor, Office of the Premier of Ontario; Associate and Partner at Davies, Ward & Beck in Toronto; as well as teaching and acting as Director of the Canadian Studies Program for the University of Toronto, Faculty of Arts & Science. He also clerked for Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. With expertise in legal ethics, corporate governance, public international law and torts, Professor Paton has published numerous articles in both U.S. and Canadian law reviews. In 2005, Professor Paton was appointed Vice-Chair of the Canadian Bar Association National Ethics & Professional Issues Committee, and in the same year was named a Fellow of the U.S. National Institute on the Teaching of Ethics & Professionalism.
Professor Rohwer recently assumed the status as Professor Emeritus after 44 years of service at Pacific McGeorge, throughout which he played an instrumental role in the development of the Pacific McGeorge international program. He has taught commercial law in cities around the world, including London, Shanghai, St. Petersburg and Vienna. Since 1996, he has served as a consultant to the government of Vietnam, writing and revising the country's Commercial Law and the Civil Code, a task in which he remains actively engaged even after his so-called retirement---during which he still teaches commercial courses at Pacific McGeorge. He is also the co-author of CONTRACTS IN A NUTSHELL, a popular source book for law students now in its sixth edition.
Professor Salcido's scholarship focuses upon international environmental law, with a particular emphasis on the oceans over the continental shelf. Since joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2003, Professor Salcido has written a book and a number of articles addressing these areas. Prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty, she practiced in the Environment, Land Use and Natural Resources Group of the internationally known law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop.
Professor Schlemmer-Schulte joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2006 after many years as an international corporate and finance lawyer, international policy-maker, and scholar in the field of international, European, and comparative financial, monetary and business law. Immediately prior to joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty, she was Visiting Scholar/Professor for International Finance and Business Law at the Max-Planck-Institute for International Law in Heidelberg, Germany, where her research focused on the reform of the international financial, monetary, and economic order in the era of globalization. She has also been senior counsel and special advisor to the senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank in Washington, D.C. She has also been an associate with law firms in Cologne and Frankfurt, Germany, and has taught at several European universities and U.S. law schools and at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Services. Professor Schlemmer-Schulte has published seven books and contributed more than 20 articles to law journals. In addition, she is an expert with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and, from time to time, serves as a consultant with several international financial institutions. Professor Sims is a constitutional law expert, who, in recent years, has also focused his attention on issues of international human rights and national security law. He has lectured widely on international human rights and other international law topics, including presentations in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, France, India, Morocco, Russia, and Spain. Professor Sims is a founding co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, a peer-reviewed and faculty-edited publication launched by Pacific McGeorge two years ago. His recent scholarship has addressed the enforcement powers of the European Court of Human Rights; legal ethics in France; and the warrantless electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency. He joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1986.
Professor Sprankling is a nationally-recognized authority on property law, whose treatise on the subject is used by law students across the country, and whose award winning articles have appeared in a number of leading law journals, including the University of Chicago Law Review, the U.C.L.A. Law Review and the Cornell Law Review. Recently, Professor Sprankling has turned his attention to comparative property law. His newest book, GLOBAL ISSUES IN PROPERTY LAW (with Raymond Coletta and M.C. Mirow), is the first classroom text in the nation that brings international and comparative law issues into the basic property course. Professor Sprankling began his legal career with Miller, Starr & Regalia, one of the nation's largest property law firms. He practiced there for 14 years, ultimately serving as its managing partner. Professor Sprankling joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 1992. He has taught in Salzburg and Suzhou, and at the Stanford University Law School.
Trained and educated in both the United States and Europe, Professor Wong has centered his scholarship on issues in international dispute resolution. He holds a law degree with First Class Honours from Cambridge University, and is an Order of the Coif graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, as well as having an LL.M. from the Law School of the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty at Pacific McGeorge, Professor Wong served as Legal Advisor to Judge Charles N. Brower at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, and practiced at the internationally known law firms of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and O'Melveny & Myers. Professor Wong joined the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2007, and has written articles and been invited to deliver lectures at major conferences dealing with international arbitration. |
Practitioners, academics and judges who regularly teach in the Pre-Internship Seminars portion of the LLM in Transnational Business Practice program:
Concepcion (Cani) Fernandez
J.D., University of Zaragoza; License Special en Droit Europeen, University of Brussels; Partner, Bufete Cuatrecasas, Barcelona, Spain and Brussels, Belgium.
Eric M. Fogel
J.D., University of Michigan; Partner, Schuyler, Roche & Zwirner, Chicago, Illinois.
Gordian Hasselblatt
LL.B., University of Hamburg; LLM, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law; Partner, Gaedertz Rechtsanwalte, Cologne, Germany.
Alexander Klauser
J.D., University of Vienna, Austria; Partner, Brauneis, Klauser & Prandl, Vienna, Austria.
Keith E. Pershall
J.D., Santa Clara University; LL.M., University of the Pacific, McGeorge; LL.M. Attorney & Counselor at Law
Thomas J. Salerno
J.D., University of Notre Dame; Partner, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, Phoenix, Arizona.
Winfried van den Muijsenbergh
J.D., University of Leiden; Partner, Loyens & Loeff, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.


Franklin A. Gevurtz








Dr. Michael P. Malloy
Christine Manolakas






Dr. Kurt Heller
Dr. Gudrun Zagel










