UCLA Law Professor Kal Raustiala

Lawyers Care More About Fixing the World; Political Scientists Just Want to Understand It

Kal Raustiala is a professor at UCLA School of Law and the UCLA International Institute, where he teaches in the Program on Global Studies. Since 2007 he has served as director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations. Before taking part in a Zócalo/UCLA Downtown event, “Is America Enabling Autocrats to Run the World?” at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, he spoke in the Zócalo green room about surfing, political science, and his favorite treaty.

Winning Freedom From Guantánamo With Forbearance and Trust

In the Shadow of Torture and Isolation, an American Lawyer and an Afghan Prisoner Bond Over Melted Mocha Ice Cream

I first visited Obaidullah at Guantánamo Bay in the spring of 2009. Before that first meeting, all I knew were the disturbing accusations against him, that he had fired his …

I Defended Mapplethorpe in the Trial That Drew the Line Between Art and Obscenity

Cincinnati’s Famous Case Tussled With the Photographer’s Work and Its Place in Our Culture

On the Friday in 1990 when the collection of 175 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, called “The Perfect Moment,” previewed at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, 8,000 people showed …