Dr. Kabir Duggal

Visiting Professor

Dr. Kabir Duggal is Senior Fellow and Advisor at the Center for International Commercial and Investment Arbitration (CICIA) at Columbia Law School, where he has taught international arbitration for more than fifteen years, and a Partner in Akin Gump’s international arbitration practice in New York and Washington, D.C. Widely recognized as one of the leading practitioners and scholars of his generation in international arbitration and public international law, Dr. Duggal maintains a practice spanning counsel, arbitrator, expert, mediator, and academic roles. He has represented sovereign States, State-owned entities, multinational corporations, and private parties in complex investor-State, international commercial disputes, and public international law matters across jurisdictions and sectors, with matters involving aggregate claims exceeding USD 100 billion.

Dr. Duggal has served as arbitrator in more than 75 investor-State and international commercial disputes involving parties from every major region of the world, and regularly acts as an expert on international arbitration and public international law before courts and arbitral tribunals. His work encompasses treaty interpretation, jurisdiction, evidence, damages, sovereign immunity, force majeure, recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards, and complex questions of public international law. He is a Chartered Arbitrator and CEDR-accredited mediator and serves on the rosters of leading arbitral institutions. His standing is reflected in sustained recognition by Chambers Global and Chambers USA, Who’s Who Legal, Lexology Index, The Legal 500, Lawdragon, and other leading professional directories. In 2024, he became the youngest practitioner named a Global Elite Thought Leader for the Americas by Who’s Who Legal, and in 2026 received the Lexology Client Choice Award for New York.

An accomplished scholar and educator, Dr. Duggal has authored more than 60 publications and delivered more than 500 lectures and keynote addresses in more than 40 countries. His scholarship addresses some of the most consequential questions in contemporary international dispute resolution, including investor-State dispute settlement, evidence, treaty interpretation, sovereign immunity, force majeure, and the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards, and has been cited by arbitral tribunals and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. He serves as Managing Editor of The American Review of International Arbitration, Editor of investmentclaims.com (Oxford University Press), Associate Editor of ICSID Review, and Associate Editor of Brill-Nijhoff’s Perspectives in International Investment Law and Arbitration. He is also Course Director of the Columbia Law School–CIArb Comprehensive Course on International Arbitration and a former Academic Coordinator of the CIArb Diploma Programme.

Dr. Duggal brings to his practice an unusually distinguished and genuinely international legal education. He holds an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he received the Harvard International Law Journal Prize and the Albert S. Pergram award; a Ph.D. from Leiden University, where he received the CEPANI Academic Prize; an LL.M. from NYU School of Law, where he was a Hauser Global Scholar and Transitional Justice Fellow; and a B.C.L. from the University of Oxford, where he was a DHL–Times of India Scholar. He also holds a law degree from the University of Mumbai, where he received the University Medal and 5 University prizes. He is admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia, England & Wales (Barrister), and India. Beyond his academic and advocacy work, Dr. Duggal is deeply engaged in the development of international dispute resolution, advising and training governments, judiciaries, ministries, State-owned entities, and arbitral institutions in more than 50 countries and serving as a Consultant to the United Nations on its Investment Support Programme.

Contact: kabir.a.duggal@durham.ac.uk