I am an assistant professor of law at the University of Georgia School of Law. My academic views reflect my decades of experience in trade and international labor law.
At the University of Georgia School of Law, I teach Public International Law, International Trade and Workers Rights, International Labor Law, U.S. Labor Law, and Contracts. I am also a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center and the faculty adviser for the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law and the Labor and Employment Student Association.
I lateraled to UGA as an assistant professor from Cornell University, where I taught international labor law and U.S. labor law at the School of Industrial Labor Relations and the Law School. The students at Cornell elected me for the 2020 MacIntyre Award for Exemplary Teaching & Advising and the 2022 Women’s Leadership Initiative Leading Ladies Award. I miss them.
As you can see on my ILO and USTR pages, I spent a lot of time in the field before joining academia. In short, I left the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. (where I was staff counsel to Chairman Bob Battista) to move to Geneva, Switzerland, to join the International Labor Organization (ILO) legal department. After eight years of traveling the world to assist governments, workers, and employers regarding international labor rights, I moved back to D.C. to join the Obama administration’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). After four years of working there, mainly under the first Trump administration, I left the field for academia. My hope is to equip students interested in trade and labor to begin their careers with the knowledge I had accumulated by the time I left.
Because my views on trade and labor were shaped by practical experiences working for trade and labor organizations, they differ from those of other academics and policymakers. For instance, I disagree with many of my labor rights friends and colleagues who argue that workers and corporations necessarily stand at odds, or that we can impose labor rights protections on recalcitrant governments. I also disagree with my international economic law friends and colleagues who take trade policy objectives at face value, or who assume that trade measures like forced labor bans can have a positive effect on workers who are otherwise deprived of the right to associate and bargain. The real world just doesn’t work that way. You need tripartite participation and voice.
My research on the topic of labor rights and trade has been featured in the Fordham Law Review, the Alabama Law Review, the Virginia Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, the Administrative Law Review, the American University Law Review, and the Berkeley Journal of International Law. Notably, my Columbia Journal of Transnational Law article titled “A Worker-Centered Trade Policy” won the ComplianceNet Outstanding Junior Publication Award. I also contribute to book compilations and to popular outlets like Fortune.
My views are apolitical, meaning I am just as likely to rile Democrats as I am Republicans. In a field as contentious as workers’ rights in a globalized world, such disagreements are welcome, and I enjoy engaging in respectful deliberations with government officials, workers’ rights advocates, and corporate lawyers. I hope we can have more honest conversations moving forward.
Desirée LeClercq 