J.D., Yale Law School
B.A., Columbia University
Paul Gewirtz is the Potter Stewart Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School, retiring in 2026 after 50 years as a professor at the Law School. He was also the longtime director of the Paul Tsai China Center, which he founded, and has now become founding director and senior fellow at the Center.
Gewirtz has taught and written in a wide range of legal and policy fields. These include constitutional law, antidiscrimination law, U.S. foreign policy and law, U.S.-China relations, Chinese law, federal courts, comparative law, law and literature, and arts and the lawyer. See “Publications” below.”
In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Gewirtz also founded two major Law School institutions. The Paul Tsai China Center, which Professor Gewirtz founded in 1999 as The China Law Center, carries out research and teaching on legal development in China and on U.S.-China relations, and also undertakes a wide range of cooperative projects with Chinese counterparts to help advance China’s legal reforms and to contribute to the development of U.S.-China relations. In 1997 and 1998, Gewirtz was on leave from Yale University to be part of former President Bill Clinton's administration, where he served as special representative for the presidential Rule of Law Initiative. In that post, he developed and led the U.S.-China initiative to cooperate in the legal field that President Clinton and China's President Jiang Zemin agreed to at their 1997 and 1998 Summit meetings. After returning to Yale, he founded the groundbreaking China center in 1999. Now named The Paul Tsai China Center, it is one of the United States’ leading China centers, addressing many major issues regarding China and U.S.-China relations.
Gewirtz was also the founder of the Law School’s Global Constitutionalism Seminar, bringing together leading Supreme Court judges from around the world to Yale each year (including Justice Stepen Breyer from the U.S. Supreme Court), and Gewirtz was the seminar’s director for its first 10 years. Joined by Law School faculty, the judges have exchanged and debated ideas about constitutional law and the ongoing evolution and differences in their countries, which has uniquely enhanced global understanding of constitutional law.
Before joining the Yale faculty, Gewirtz served as law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States and practiced law in Washington, D.C. at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, and the Center for Law and Social Policy. He is currently also a nonresident affiliated fellow at Brookings in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. He received his B.A. degree summa cum laude from Columbia University and his law degree from Yale.
“The U.S., China, and the Future of the Rules-Based International Order,” Brookings Institution (2024).
“Law as Foundation, Lawyers as Leaders” (法为基石，法律人为领导者) in Studying Broadly and Exploring the Law: Selected Lectures by “Global Faculty” Scholars of Peking University Law School (通学问法：北大法学院“全球教席”学者讲座精编) (Beijing: Law Press, 2024). (Chinese PDF) (English PDF)
“Words and policies: ‘De-risking’ and China policy,” Brookings Institution (2023).
“A Roadmap for U.S.-Europe Cooperation on China,” (February 2021) (with Ryan Hass, Susan Thornton, Robert Williams, Craig Allen, David Dollar). (PDF)
“Working With Our (European) Allies,” in The Future of US Policy Toward China (November 2020).
“The Future of Trans-Atlantic Collaboration on China: What the EU-China Summit Showed,” Brookings Institution (June 2020).
“No one knows: How the unknowable consequences of COVID-19 affect thinking about foreign policy and US-China relations,” Brookings Institution (June 2020).
“Can the U.S.-China Crisis Be Stabilized?,” Brookings Institution (June 2019).
“China, the United States, and the Future of the Global Order (中国、美国和全球秩序的未来),” (国际秩序), no. 1, 2018, pp. 36–46 (Beijing: China Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018). [Chinese]
Book Review of Ji Weidong, “Building the Rule of Law in China: Ideas, Praxis and Institutional Design (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2017),” Asian Journal of Law and Society (2018).
“Impulsiveness, Law, and the Immigration Order,” Lawfare (Feb 13, 2017).
“Getting More Cooperation From China on North Korea,” Lawfare (August 16, 2017) (with Joe Onek).
“How China Misread Donald Trump,” Politico (July 6, 2017).
“No Winners or Losers, Please,” ChinaFile, Asia Society (April 5, 2017).
“Constitutional Enforcement: Who Should Do It and How?” China Law Review, Volume 4, No. 12 (October 2016). (English) | (Chinese)
“Why law can’t solve the South China Sea conflict,” Washington Post (July 12, 2016).
“Limits of Law in the South China Sea,” Brookings Institution (May 2016). (English); (Chinese)
“Obama’s Chance to Get China Right,” ChinaFile, Asia Society (November 8, 2014).
“What China Means by ‘Rule of Law’,” The New York Times (October 19, 2014).
“Xi, Mao, and China's Search for a Usable Past,” ChinaFile, Asia Society (English) | Caixin, January 14, 2014. (Chinese)
“A Re-Opening to China?,” ChinaFile, Asia Society (June 5, 2013). (English); (Chinese)
“The Pragmatic Passion of Stephen Breyer,” 115 Yale Law Journal 1675 (2006). (PDF)
“The U.S.-China Rule of Law Initiative,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, vol. 11, 2003, pp. 603–621.
BOOKS: “Global Constitutionalism,” 10 Volumes, 1996-2005. [See below]
Preface to 同性恋与法：“性、政策与法国际学术研讨会”论文及资料 [Tongxinglian yu Fa: “Xing, Zhengce yu Fa Guoji Xueshu Yantaohui” Lunwen ji Ziliao] ["Homosexuality and Law: Essays and Materials from the International Academic Symposium on Sexuality, Policy, and Law"] pp. 1–4 (Chinese), page 93–98 (English), edited by Zhou Dan (周丹) (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2005). [Book available in Yale Law School Library.]
“Privacy and Speech,” The Supreme Court Review (2001).
“Approaches to Constitutional Interpretation: Comparative Constitutionalism and Chinese Characteristics,” 31 Hong Kong Law Journal (2001).
“The China Law Center, Yale Law School,” (2001). [Available in Yale Law School Library.]
“The Triumph and Transformation of Antidiscrimination Law,” in Austin Sarat, “Race, Law, and Culture: Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education” (1997).
“Constitutional Law and New Technology,” 64 Social Policy, No. 3 (Fall 1997), https://www.jstor.org/stable/40971207?seq=1
BOOK: Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz, “Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law,” New Haven: Yale University Press (1996).
“On ‘I Know It When I See It',” 105 Yale Law Journal 1023 (1996), https://doi.org/10.2307/797245.
“Victims and Voyeurs at the Criminal Trial,” 90 Northwest University Law Review 863 (1995).
“Thurgood Marshall,” 101 Yale Law Journal 13 (1991), https://www.jstor.org/stable/796932?seq=1
BOOK: Edited with an Introduction: Karl Llewellyn, “The Case Law System in America,” University of Chicago Press (1989).
“Aeschylus' Law,” 101 Harvard Law Review 1043 (1988).
“Realism in Separation of Powers Thinking,” 30 William and Mary Law Review 343 (1988).
“A Lawyer's Death,” 100 Harvard Law Review 2053 (1987), https://www.jstor.org/stable/1341200?seq=1
“Choice in the Transition: School Desegregation and the Corrective Ideal”, 86 Columbia Law Review 728 (1986).
“Remedies and Resistance,” 92 Yale Law Journal 585 (1983).
“Global Constitutionalism” volumes (all in the Yale Law School Library):
