Michael Ramsey

Constitutional Law, International Business Transactions, Foreign Relations Law, Federal Courts, International Civil Litigation, and Constitutional Interpretation. His scholarship focuses on the constitutional and international law aspects of U.S. foreign relations, particularly in the areas of war powers, treaties, and presidential authority, as well as on the litigation of transnational claims in U.S. courts.

Professor Ramsey clerked for Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced international business law with the firm of Latham & Watkins before joining the USD School of Law faculty in 1995. Professor Ramsey has taught as a visiting professor at the University of California San Diego (department of political science) and the University of Paris-Sorbonne (department of comparative law) and has lectured in Australia, Denmark, the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Mexico and South Africa. 

Professor Ramsey has received USD School of Law’s Thorsnes Prizes for Excellence in Teaching and for Outstanding Scholarship and has been named Herzog Endowed Scholar. Professor Ramsey was also named a 2024-2025 University Professor, the highest academic honor bestowed by the University on faculty in any field. In 2022-23, he was named the Class of 1975 Endowed Professor in recognition of his teaching, leadership, and academic accomplishments. He was twice named among San Diego’s outstanding attorneys (academic category). His book International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (co-edited with David L. Sloss and William S. Dodge) received the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit as a “work of great distinction,” and he was listed among the nation’s most cited scholars in the field of international law and security for the periods 2013-2017 and 2016-2020. He is a member of the California State Bar, the U.S. Supreme Court Bar, and the American Society of International Law.