Ben Davis is a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Toledo College of Law. He is a graduate of Harvard College (BA) and Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School (JD-MBA) where he was Articles Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. Professor Davis teaches in the areas of Contracts, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Arbitration, Public International Law, and International Business Transactions. He was granted an Outstanding Teacher Award by the University of Toledo in 2016. He created the Guantanamo Military Commission Human Rights Observer Program at the University of Toledo.
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Davis was an Associate Professor at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law (now Texas A & M University School of Law). Between 1983 and 1986, he worked in Paris, France and in West Africa with Louis Berger and Co as a Development Consultant and with Mars and Co (a Boston Consulting Group spin-off then) in Europe as a Strategic Business Consultant.
In 1986, he became the American Legal Counsel at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce where he supervised directly or indirectly over 5000 international commercial arbitration and mediation cases, made filings before courts around the world on behalf of the ICC, assisted with the drafting of arbitration laws in countries such as India and Sri Lanka, and led conferences in Eastern and Western Europe, North America, and Asia. He led the design and implementation of the first computerized case management system for the Court (1989-1993) (during the migration from MS-DOS to Windows in the digital world) which is now in its third generation and remains robust.
In 1996, he was promoted to Director, Conference Programmes and Manager of the Institute of World Business Law where he led the turnaround of the institute and organized training sessions on international contracts, dispute resolution, project finance, and electronic commerce.
He is the creator of fast-track international commercial arbitration (1991-2) and the creator of the International Competitions for Online Dispute Resolution (ICODR) (2000-2005) by which students from around the world competed in online negotiation, mediation, arbitration and litigation for free.
He is a former co-chair of the Diversity Committee of the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution, as well as a former Council Member and former Liaison of the ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline (Pipeline Council). He was a member and Subcommittee Chair for the Arbitration Competition for the ABA-Law Student Division Competitions Committee helping develop the arbitration moot court of the ABA.
He is a former Member of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security and is a member of the Africa Council of the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI).
He led the successful effort in the American Society of International Law to pass only the 8th resolution in its history entitled the ASIL Centennial Resolution on Laws of War and Detainee Treatment in 1996. He is a Board Member of the Society of American Law Teachers and has worked on amicus briefs to courts and made shadow reports and represented SALT to United Nations human rights entities in Geneva doing periodic reporting on the human rights record of the United States. He is a founder of Advocates for US Torture Prosecutions.
Professor Davis has given numerous presentations and speeches around the world. He is a contributing editor at Jurist and the SALTLAW Blog. He has published dozens of articles on topics related to international and domestic arbitration, online and offline dispute resolution, and international law.
Contact Section Chair Benjamin G. Davis at benjaming.davis@icloud.com or on Twitter at @bengriffdavis.