Professor Paul Gowder to Serve on EPLO’s Global Rule of Law Commission

Paul A. Gowder, Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, has been selected to serve as a member of the European Public Law Organization’s (EPLO) Global Rule of Law Commission. The EPLO is an international organization dedicated to the creation and dissemination of knowledge in the area of public law and governance, including but not limited to national, comparative and European public law, human rights law and environmental law and the promotion of European values for a better generation of lawyers and democratic institutions worldwide. The EPLO has been granted the Observer Status at the General Assembly of the United Nations, at the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Labor Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the Espoo Convention and SEA Protocol – UNECE and the status of Associate Observer by the Community of Portuguese-speaking countries (CPLP).

The EPLO established the Global Rule of Law Commission in 2019 with the aim to promote public law and governance worldwide. The 23 Commission members are appointed each year by the EPLO, with no two members being of the same nationality. As a member of the Commission, Professor Gowder will attend its annual meeting and conference in Cascais, Portugal, in January 2025, where he will collaborate with legal scholars from around the world to “develop a comprehensive Global concept of the Rule of Law with respect to Universal Values and diversity in a dialogue of civilizations.”

“Congratulations to Professor Paul Gowder on this extremely well-deserved honor of being named to the EPLO’s Global Rule of Law Commission,” said Dean Hari Osofsky. “We are thrilled for him and look forward to the impactful contributions he will make as a member of this international Commission.”

“As we face worldwide challenges to the rule of law and liberal democracy, this sort of global effort to understand what the rule of law is and where it can be supported becomes more and more critical,” said Gowder. “I am honored to have the opportunity to participate in the Commission’s important work.”

Paul Gowder joined the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law faculty in 2020. His research focuses on the rule of law, democratic theory, social and racial equality, institutional and organizational governance, law and technology, and classical Athenian law and political thought. He has taught a variety of classes including constitutional law, torts, critical race theory, professional responsibility, and introductory programming and statistics for law students. In his practice days, he was a civil rights and legal aid lawyer. In those contexts, he represented victims of police misconduct, predatory lending, employment discrimination, unlawful eviction, domestic violence, and numerous other injustices. His first book, The Rule of Law in the Real World, was published in 2016, and his second, The Rule of Law in the United States: An Unfinished Project of Black Liberation, was published in December 2021 and is available in free open-access electronic form at https://rulelaw.us. His third book, The Networked Leviathan, was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2023.