Karen Sokol

Karen Sokol joined the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law faculty in 2009. Her research and teaching interests include international law, foreign relations and national security law, constitutional law, climate law, and administrative law. Her work has been or will be published in the Minnesota Law Review, Washington Law Review, American Journal of International Law, Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence, Yearbook of International Disaster Law, and Oxford University Press. She served as a Fellow of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy at Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs during the 2022-23 academic year and was a Fulbright Scholar in India and Nepal in 2018. In addition to her academic work, she regularly publishes commentary in various outlets, including Lawfare, Slate, The Hill, and Bloomberg Law.  She has been interviewed on NPR and the BBC and widely quoted in the press about global climate litigation and other climate-related matters, including in Reuters, The Guardian, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, PBS Frontline, and Fortune. She is currently a member of the U.S. expert advisory group for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s Southeast Interest Group, an associate scholar with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Centre for Climate Change and the Law, a member of the Climate Accountability Working Group of the Climate Social Science Network, and a board member of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Sokol graduated from Yale Law School, where she served as Articles Editor for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal and was a member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic.  After law school, she clerked for Judge Carolyn Dineen King of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate in the appellate section of Vinson & Elkins, LLP. The year before coming to Loyola, she was a fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.  Her publications can be found here.

Areas of Expertise: International Law, Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations and National Security Law, Climate Law, Administrative Law, Torts