Leila Nadya Sadat

Leila Nadya Sadat (LinkedIn – Bluesky) is and is one of the world’s leading scholars of international law and international criminal justice. She has devoted her career to advancing accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and has advised governments, international institutions, and civil society organizations around the world. Her scholarship and leadership have shaped global conversations about justice, accountability, and the future of international law, particularly as regards her work leading the campaign for a new global treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

In addition to her academic work, she is involved in the practice of international law and global justice, served as special advisor on crimes against humanity to the ICC Prosecutor from 2013-2023 and as a Commissioner on the US Commission for International Religious Freedom from 2001-2003. She is currently a rostered expert with the OECD Moscow Mechanism. She visited at Yale Law School from 2021 until 2024 and will be teaching at UCLA Law School in the 2027 January term. She is a prolific scholar, with more than 175 publications to her name, and is currently working on a new book on her initiative to develop a new global treaty on crimes against humanity. In addition to her other awards, in  2025 she received the Goler T. Butcher Medal from the American Society of International Law, and in 2026 received the Inaugural Norman Cousins Global Governance Award from Citizens for Global Solutions. She holds law degrees from Tulane and Columbia Universities, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and an Honorary Doctorate from Northwestern University.