Christopher Rossi teaches international law and international relations at the Arctic University of Norway (University of Tromsø). He has worked on the Psychology of Deterrence project at the Arms Control Association of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., on verification and public information issues for the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, and as an assistant professor of international relations and American foreign policy at American University in Washington, D.C. In 1997-1998, he served as a director on the National Security Council in the Clinton White House in the office of Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.
Dr. Rossi is the author of Remoteness Reconsidered: The Atacama Desert and International Law (University of Michigan Press, 2021), Whiggish International Law: Elihu Root, the Monroe Doctrine, and International Law in the Americas (Brill/Nijhoff, 2019), Sovereignty and Territorial Temptation (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Broken Chain of Being, James Brown Scott and the Origins of Modern International Law (Kluwer, 1993), and Equity and International Law (Transnational, 1991). He is the co-editor of Temas de derecho internacional, and assistant co-editor of Toward Nuclear Disarmament and Global Security (Westview), and over thirty articles on international law, most recently “Interstitial Space and the High Himalayan Dispute between China and India,” 62(2) Harvard International Law Journal 429-468 (2021), and “Blood and Water: Diverting the Waters of the Indus River,” 29(2) Minnesota Journal of International Law 103-158 (2020). His publications involving Arctic region and concerns include: “Arctic Anadromy and Congested Regime Governance.” 52(3) Environmental Law Reporter 10193-10210 (2022), “Asia-Pacific Interests in the Emerging Arctic,” 9(1) Yonsei Law Journal, 1-21 (2018), “The Nomos of Climate Change and the Sociological Refugee in a Sinking Century,” 50(3) George Washington International Law Review, 101-138 (2018), “Norway’s Imperiled Sovereignty Claim over Svalbard’s Adjacent Waters,” 18(6) German Law Journal, 1497-1530 (2017), “Unique International Problem: The Svalbard Treaty, Equal Enjoyment, and Terra Nullius: Lessons of Territorial Temptation from History,” 15(1) Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 93-136 (2016), “The Club Within the Club: The Challenge of a Soft Law Framework in a Global Arctic Context,” 5(1) Polar Journal, 8-34 (2015), and “A Particular Kind of Dominium: The Grotian ‘Tendency’ and the Global Commons in a Time of High Arctic Change,” 11(1) University of Toronto Journal of International Law & International Relations, 1-60 (2015).
He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, an LL.M. in Public International Law from King’s College London, a J.D. from the University of Iowa, and a B.A. from Washington University.