About Thomas H.
Thomas H. Lee built his academic foundation at Harvard. He earned an A.B. and an A.M. in 1991, studying East Asian Languages & Civilizations and Government. He returned to Harvard for law school and received his J.D. in 2000. Those years set the stage for a career that moves between classrooms, courts and international tribunals.
After law school, Lee spent two consecutive clerkships that placed him inside the federal judiciary. In 2000 he served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The following year he served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter at the Supreme Court of the United States. Those early experiences in appellate work informed both his teaching and his later practice.
Lee began a parallel career in academia and public service soon after his clerkships. He joined Fordham University School of Law as the Leitner Family Professor of International Law in 2002. Over the years he has held visiting and adjunct posts at several law schools, including Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law and New York University School of Law. In 2006 he served as an adviser to the Constitutional Court of Korea. He has also been named to the ICSID panel in 2013, a role linked to investor-state dispute resolution. In 2019 he took on a role as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the United States Department of Defense. Lee has combined classroom teaching with periodic visiting appointments, teaching each semester as his schedule permits.
In private practice he joined Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP as Of Counsel in 2016. He is admitted to practice in New York and before the U.S. Supreme Court, and he is also admitted in the First, Second and D.C. Circuits. His work has moved between international law, appellate litigation and matters involving public institutions. He has balanced scholarly work and classroom instruction with government service and law firm practice, often addressing questions that cross national and doctrinal lines.
His career has been shaped by appellate work, international dispute resolution and legal education. He continues to teach at Fordham Law School while maintaining a practice as Of Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP. He currently divides his professional time between teaching and practice, and his practice centers on international law and related litigation.
