Gayl S. Westerman

Emeritus Professor Gayl Westerman has taught courses in International Law, Contracts, Commercial Law, and the Prosecution of War Crimes, and was the Director of International Programs. She served as the Charles A. Frueauff Research Professor of Law during the 1993–1994 and 1999–2000 academic years. Her legal scholarship focused primarily on the law of the sea.

Professor Westerman’s books include The Juridical Bay (1987, Oxford University Press), Straight Baselines in International Maritime Boundary Delimitation (with W.M. Reisman) (1992, St. Martin’s Press), and International Law In Contemporary Perspective (2004, Foundation Press) (with Reisman, Arsanjani, and Wiessner).

Professor Westerman was a Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School in 1988, when she taught Maritime Boundary Delimitation, and in 1991, when she taught Commercial Law. In 1991, Professor Westerman served as a pro bono consultant on school desegregation to the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union. At that time, she began a major research study of successfully desegregated school districts in the South. In 1996 her lead article on school desegregation was published by the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Professor Westerman retired from the full-time faculty in 2011.

• BA, Stanford University
• MS, University of Pennsylvania
• JD, Pace Law School
• LLM, Yale Law School
• JSD, Yale Law School

Books

• International Law in Contemporary Perspective (Foundation Press, 2004) (with W. Michael Reisman, Mahnoush H. Arsanjani, and Siegfried Wiessner)
• The Juridical Bay: Its Designation and Delimitation in International Law (Oxford University Press, 1987)
• Straight Baselines in International Maritime Boundary Delimitations (St. Martin's Press/McMillan, 1992) (with W. Michael Reisman)

Articles

• The Promise of State Constitutionalism: Can It Be Fulfilled in Sheff v. O'Neill?, 23 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 351 (1996)
• Rejoinder to John Briscoe's Review of The Juridical Bay, 20 Ocean Development and International Law 429 (1989)
• Straight Baselines in International Law: A Call for Reconsideration, 82 American Society of International Law Proceedings 260 (1988)
• The Juridical Status of the Gulf of Taranto: A Brief Reply, (Conference on Historic Bays of the Mediterranean, Syracuse University Center, October 12–13, 1984, Transcript) 11 Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 297 (1984)