Jason Yackee

Foley and Lardner Bascom Professor of Law

Contact

jyackee@wisc.edu
608/262-5230
975 Bascom Mall, 7106 Law Building, Madison, WI, USA, 53706-1399

Education

M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
J.D. Duke University School of Law

Biography

Professor Yackee is the Foley & Lardner-Bascom Professor of Law at UW-Madison. His research centers on international investment law, international economic relations, foreign arbitration, and administrative law and politics. He teaches or has taught Contracts, Public International Law, International Investment Law, International Arbitration, and International Business Transactions.

Professor Yackee graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pittsburgh, earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science (International Relations) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and earned a J.D., summa cum laude and Order of the Coif, from Duke University School of Law where he was an editor for the Duke Law Journal. He has also studied French and European law at L'Université Pantheon-Assas (Paris-2), and he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to conduct research on Thai foreign investment law at the Thammasat University Faculty of Law, in Bangkok, Thailand.

Professor Yackee has published articles in a variety of peer-reviewed social science journals, student-edited law reviews, and edited volumes, and he has presented his work widely both internationally and abroad. His main research agenda focuses on international investment law and investor-state arbitration. He has also written on a wide variety of other topics, including choice of law clauses; notice-and-comment rulemaking; affirmative action; and law-and-development. His work on choice of law clauses has been cited by both the U.S. Second and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeal.

Professor Yackee is currently working on a major historical project that uses archival research to analyze the French government's use of diplomatic and legal means to protect its foreign investors in Africa. The first article from that project, published in the Journal of World Investment & Trade, provides a detailed study of a largely forgotten 1864 arbitration between the Suez Canal Company and Egypt. A second article, published in the American Journal of Legal History, explored the resolution of a major post-colonial mining dispute in Mauritania. A third was recently published in the peer-reviewed history journal French Historical Studies on the Republic of Congo's expropriation of a French-owned sugar operation in the 1970s.

Scholarship & Publications

SSRN

Law Repository

Research Interests

International Law
Administrative Law

Activities

Jason Yackee published "Procedural Constraints and Regulatory Ossification in the United States," co-authored with Susan Webb Yackee. Read the paper.
Heinz Klug is chairing the search-and-screen committee to find a new UW Law dean. Other committee members include: Michelle Behnke, Roman Gierok, Erica Halverson, Alexandra Huneeus, Richard Monette, Yaron Nili, Kim Peterson, Howard Schweber, Mitra Sharafi, Susannah Tahk, Janice Toliver, Kathryn VandenBosch, Steven Wright, and Jason Yackee.
Jason Yackee spoke on the divergence and convergence of international trade and investment law at the 2011 conference of the American Society of International Law, in Washington, D.C. ASIL is the leading professional organization for international law scholars and practitioners.
Jason Yackee's paper “Testing the Ossification Thesis” was accepted for publication by the George Washington Law Review. The paper will appear in the Review's annual administrative law volume.
Jason Yackee presented his paper “Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Promote Foreign Direct Investment?” at workshops at the University of Georgia Law School and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. The paper presents empirical evidence, consistent with “law and society” theory, that multinational corporations do not view international legal protections as very important when deciding whether and where to invest abroad.
Jason Yackee presented his working paper, “Testing the Ossification Thesis,” at faculty workshops at the University of Texas Law School and the Vanderbilt University Law School. The paper challenges the widespread notion that procedures designed to ensure bureaucratic accountability and regulatory rationality have prevented federal agencies from effectively regulating in the public interest.
Jason Yackee's article, "How much do U.S. corporations know (and care) about bilateral investment treaties? Some hints from new survey evidence," was featured in Columbia FDI Perspectives, an electronic publication of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Development.
Jason Yackee presented his paper, "Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Promote Foreign Direct Investment? Some Hints from Alternative Evidence," at the 2010 conference of the American Society for International Law's International Economic Law Interest Group in Minneapolis. At the conference, Professor Yackee also was elected to serve as the Interest Group's co-vice chair.
Jason Yackee's article, "The 2006 Procedural and Transparency-Related Amendments to the ICSID Arbitration Rules: Model Intentions, Moderate Proposals, and Modest Returns," has been published in the Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy for 2009-10. The Yearbook is published by Oxford University Press and contains contributions from top scholars in the field of international investment law. The article was co-authored with Professor Jarrod Wong of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.
Jason Yackee was nominated to serve as vice chair of the American Society of International Law's (ASIL) International Economic Law Interest Group in 2010. ASIL is the premier association of international law scholars and practitioners. The International Economic Law Interest Group engages in various activities, including conferences and study projects, and seeks to assist in fostering greater understanding in education and international economic law.
Jason Yackee participated in the second annual World Investment Forum, held in Xiamen, China, as an invited expert in international investment law. The Forum was organized by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and brought together leading international practitioners, policy makers, and international law experts to discuss the role of international law in promoting sustainable economic development.
Jason Yackee presented his paper "Empirical Methods and the Study of Bilateral Investment Treaties" at a September 2010, workshop for the Transnational Law Project at the London School of Economics.
Jason Yackee's article, "Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Promote Foreign Direct Investment? Some Hints from Alternative Evidence," has been accepted for publication by the Virginia Journal of International Law.
Jason Yackee was named co-directors of the Wisconsin Project on Governance and Regulation (WISGAR) in 2010. WISGAR's mission is to promote cutting-edge analysis of state-level regulatory practice that is of both theoretical value to scholars of regulation, and of practical value to regulators and politicians in Wisconsin and beyond.
Jason Yackee recently presented his paper "Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Promote Foreign Direct Investment? Some Hints from Alternative Evidence", at the 2010 Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago.