Orde Félix Kittrie is a tenured Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, for which he directs the Semester in Washington, DC Program.  His current teaching and research interests include nonproliferation law, international law, criminal law, and legal issues relating to the U.S.-Mexico border.  Kittrie is also a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Innovative Teacher

Professor Kittrie was named 2006-2007 Centennial Professor of the Year at Arizona State University.  This university-wide award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, honors outstanding teaching inside and outside of the classroom. 

Nuclear Nonproliferation Law Expert and Scholar

Kittrie is a leading expert on nuclear nonproliferation and especially nuclear nonproliferation legal issues and sanctions.  Kittrie currently serves as chair of the Nonproliferation, Arms Control & Disarmament Committee of the American Society of International Law.  Kittrie has testified on nonproliferation issues before committees of both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, including at hearings in July 2009, March 2009, July 2008, and April 2008.  In addition, he served as one of fourteen members of a special National Academies of Science committee, created by Congress (in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008), to make recommendations on how to improve U.S. programs to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.  In addition to Professor Kittrie, the members of the committee included a former deputy cabinet secretary, two former Under Secretaries of State, two former directors of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a former Commander in Chief of the US Strategic Command, and a former Assistant Secretary of Energy.

In February 2008, Kittrie wrote a chapter for a report produced by the National Academies of Science, in coordination with the Russian Academy of Sciences, entitled The Future of the Nuclear Security Environment in 2015.  Professor Kittrie's chapter describes and analyzes several critical legal issues that must be successfully managed if future U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation is to be maximized.  In 2005, Kittrie served as one of six members of a special National Academies of Science committee that produced with the Russian Academy of Sciences a joint report entitled Strengthening US-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Nonproliferation, for which Kittrie wrote the chapter on legal obstacles and opportunities. 

Kittrie has been a guest speaker on nonproliferation issues of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Belgian Royal Military Academy, and the Royal Military College of Canada.   He has also lectured at over a dozen universities including Harvard, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, King’s College London, and the University of Pennsylvania; published op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and several other publications; and done on-air commentary for numerous television and radio stations (including affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Univision) and networks including Fox, PBS, and al Jazeera.   Kittrie has also testified before the Maryland, Ohio and Virginia state legislatures, and advised several other state legislatures, regarding proposed legislation that would divest state pension funds from foreign companies doing business with Iran.

Kittrie has published scholarly articles in the University of Michigan Law Review, the University of Iowa Law Review, the University of Michigan Journal of International Law, the Syracuse University Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law.

Former State Department Official

Prior to joining the ASU law faculty in 2004, Professor Kittrie served for eleven years at the United States Department of State.  As the Department's lead nuclear affairs attorney for three years, Kittrie participated in negotiating five U.S.-Russia nuclear agreements and a U.N. treaty to combat nuclear terrorism. In other assignments at the State Department, Kittrie directed the Office of International Anti-Crime Programs, was Senior Attorney and Adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy, was Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economics and Business Affairs, and was the lead attorney for arms and dual-use trade controls. 

As the State Department's Director of International Anti-Crime Programs, Kittrie oversaw United States policy and technical assistance programs for promoting the rule of law and combating transnational crime worldwide, including corruption, money laundering, intellectual property piracy, cybercrime, and alien smuggling.  Key projects he launched in that capacity include an anti-corruption initiative in Iraq and an Arab regional anticorruption initiative in cooperation with the World Bank and the United Nations.  Prior to that assignment, Kittrie served as a Senior Attorney and Adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy, assisting with efforts to improve America's image and promote human rights and democracy in the Arab world.

Kittrie earlier served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business & Agricultural Affairs.  In that capacity, he helped coordinate economic aid for Pakistan following September 11 and assisted with planning for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.  Kittrie also worked on U.S.-Mexico border issues, the reform of Jordanian business law, and negotiation of the world's first multilateral agreement to combat computer crime.  Prior to that, Kittrie was the Department’s lead attorney for trade controls governing arms and dual-use items, in which capacity he was a principal drafter of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, U.S. Executive Orders, and U.S. regulations imposing and implementing arms embargoes on terrorism-supporting and other outlaw regimes, including Rwanda during the genocide.

Immediately following his graduation from the University of Michigan Law School, Kittrie was a Ford Foundation Fellow in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria.  Prior to law school, he served as Press Spokesman and Legislative Assistant to U.S. Congresswoman Connie Morella.

Mexican-American Law Expert and Scholar

A Mexican-American, Kittrie writes, teaches and speaks frequently on legal issues relating to the U.S.-Mexico border and is active in the Latino community.  Kittrie has spoken at the annual meetings of both the Association of American Law Schools and the American Bar Association on issues at the intersection of crime and immigration.  During 2006, Kittrie served as President of Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) Region XIV, representing Arizona and Nevada on the HNBA Board of Governors and overseeing HNBA activities in those states.  Kittrie also serves as a faculty advisor to ASU's Chicano/Latino Law Student Association and served for several years as a member of the board of directors of Los Abogados, the Hispanic Bar Association of Arizona.  Kittrie was honored by the Chicano Faculty Staff Association of ASU with the Dr. Manuel Servin Faculty Award for 2006. Kittrie was also named by Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education magazine as one of the U.S.'s four most notable Hispanic professors of international law.

Selected Scholarly Publications

Orde F. Kittrie , Lawfare and U.S. National Security, 43 CASE W. RES. J. INT’L L. 393-421 (2011) (part of symposium titled “Lawfare”). Available at http://www.case.edu/orgs/jil/vol.43.1.2/43_Kittrie.pdf

Gary Marchant, Orde F. Kittrie, et al., International Governance of Autonomous Military Robots, COLUM. SCI. & TECH. L. REV. (2011). Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1778424 .

Orde F. Kittrie, New Sanctions for a New Century: Treasury's Innovative Use of Financial Sanctions, 30 U. Pa. J. Int’l L. 789-822 (2009). Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1402265.