Evelyn Mary Aswad

Evelyn Mary Aswad is a Professor of Law and the Herman G. Kaiser Chair in International Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. She is also the Director of its Center for International Business & Human Rights. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of international human rights law, technology, corporate responsibility standards, and freedom of expression and opinion. She is a recipient of the David Ross Boyd Professorship, which is one of the university’s highest honors.

 

Professor Aswad is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. Professor Aswad serves on the Advisory Committee on International Law to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser. From 2013-2017, she served as the U.S. Substitute Member to the Council of Europe’s Commission for Democracy Through Law (better known as the Venice Commission). From 2015-2020, she was a member of the U.S. Department of State’s Stakeholder Advisory Board to the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. She was nominated in 2021 by the U.S. Government to be the U.S. candidate for the International Law Commission. She was appointed in 2024 to the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Responsible Business Conduct.

 

Prior to becoming a law professor, Professor Aswad served for about 14 years as an attorney in the Legal Bureau at the U.S. Department of State, most recently as the Director of the Office of Human Rights and Refugees. At the U.S. State Department, she advised senior officials on a wide range of international human rights law matters, including Internet freedom, the assessment of foreign laws and practices with respect to human rights obligations, issues at the intersection of international business and human rights, U.S. ratification of human rights treaties, human rights litigation in U.S. courts, issues involving mass atrocities and accountability, and matters arising in multilateral fora, such as U.S. participation at the United Nation’s (UN) Human Rights Council and its Universal Periodic Review process.

 

She served as legal adviser for U.S. delegations in a variety of multilateral fora, including the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the Organization of American States, the OSCE Annual Human Dimension Implementation meeting, and the delegation presenting the U.S. Periodic Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as well as the delegation presenting the first US Universal Periodic Review report to the UN. She received superior honor awards for advancing international human rights through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy.

 

She taught international human rights law and multilateral negotiations to U.S. diplomats at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. In addition, she taught international courses as an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service as well as its Law Center. Prior to joining the State Department, she worked at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Arnold & Porter and clerked for the Honorable Arthur J. Gajarsa at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a magna cum laude graduate of its Law Center.

 

Fellowship Project: Evelyn's research project will examine how AI companies are monetizing their products and services through the lens of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). She plans to focus on how such business models intersect with Article 19(1)'s right to hold opinions without interference in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and to provide a set of actionable recommendations.