Educational Program: Can We Ever Stop Cyber Threats?

In this Educational Program, foreign journalists will learn how international laws apply to cyberspace and how countries and civil society are organizing themselves in order to prevent cyber attacks. In an interview conducted by journalist Patricia Vasconcellos, Board member of the Club of Foreign Correspondents in the US (AFPC-USA) and WH Correspondent for SBT, Duncan B. Hollis, expert on treaties and the application of international law to cyberspace, dives and explains to foreign journalists legal norms regarding cyber threats and talks also about the United Nations 'open-ended working group'. This educational program was held on March 11th. 

Duncan B. Hollis is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law and also co-directs the University’s Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology. He is currently a non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an elected member of the American Law Institute, where he serves as an Adviser on its project to draft a Fourth Restatement on the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. 

Professor Hollis’s research focuses on public international law, the law of treaties, interpretation, and global cybersecurity. He is the editor of the Oxford Guide to Treaties (Oxford University Press, 2012, 2nd edition, 2020), which was awarded the 2013 ASIL Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers. His cyber-related research examines international law’s role in regulating cyberthreats, the construction of cybernorms, and the application of humanitarian principles to global cybersecurity.

Hollis is also the co-author with Professors Allen Weiner and Chimene Keitner of a leading textbook, International Law (8th ed., 2023) and (with Jens Ohlin) Defending Democracies: Combatting Foreign Election Interference in a Digital Age (OUP, 2020). His more than 30 articles and book chapters have appeared in various publications, including the American Journal of International Law, Texas Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Harvard Journal of International Law, and Virginia Journal of International Law. 

Previously, Professor Hollis served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he participated in various bilateral and multilateral treaty negotiations as well as the litigation of two cases before the International Court of Justice.