Dr. Kabir Duggal

Fellow

Dr. Kabir Duggal serves as Senior Fellow and Advisor at the Center for International Commercial and Investment Arbitration (CICIA) at Columbia Law School, and as a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School. He is also a Partner in the New York and Washington, D.C., offices of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. His practice and scholarship focus on international commercial arbitration, investor-State arbitration, and public international law, with extensive experience advising and representing States, State-owned entities, multinational corporations, and private parties in complex cross-border disputes.

A Chartered Arbitrator and Certified Mediator, he has served as arbitrator in more than 75 complex investor-State and international commercial disputes and regularly acts as an expert in international arbitration and public international law. His work encompasses international commercial arbitration and investor-State dispute settlement, as well as broader questions of public international law, including treaty interpretation, State responsibility, jurisdiction, sovereign immunity, evidence, recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards, force majeure, and other substantive and procedural issues arising in international disputes.

He is also Visiting Professor of Law at Durham University, Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law, and Course Director of the Columbia Law School–CIArb Comprehensive Course on International Arbitration. His scholarship spans international arbitration, investment law, and public international law, and he has authored more than 70 publications and delivered over 500 lectures and keynote addresses worldwide.

He advises the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States on its Investment Support Programme and has led capacity-building initiatives for governments, judiciaries, and institutions around the world. He is consistently ranked by Chambers and Partners, Lexology Index, The Legal 500, and Lawdragon, and has received numerous distinctions, including the Hind Rattan Award, the Albert H. Pergam International Law Writing Award, the Smit-Lowenfeld Prize, the Arbitral Women “Champion for Change” Award, and multiple Global and Americas Dispute Resolution Practitioner of the Year awards.

Dr. Duggal graduated from Harvard Law School (S.J.D., Harvard International Law Journal Prize), Leiden University (Ph.D., CEPANI Academic Prize), New York University School of Law (LL.M., Hauser Global Scholar and Transitional Justice Fellow), the University of Oxford (B.C.L., DHL–Times of India Scholar), and the University of Mumbai (University Medal), and is admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia, England & Wales (as a Barrister), and India.