Associate Professor of Law
Courses Taught
- Evidence
- International Law
- Criminal Law
Biography
Cody Corliss teaches and writes in criminal law, international law, and the law of armed conflict, with a particular focus on the prosecution of war crimes and terrorism under international criminal law. His research examines how international courts and tribunals have addressed atrocity crimes, including the war crime of terror, and the structural challenges facing accountability for mass violence. His scholarship has appeared in the Yale Journal of International Law, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, and Utah Law Review, and has been selected for presentation at the Michigan Law School Junior Scholars Conference.
Professor Corliss's scholarship is informed by significant practice experience in international criminal law. Prior to joining the faculty, he served as a war crimes prosecutor at two United Nations international criminal tribunals, where his work involved all facets of criminal adjudication, including investigation, indictment confirmation, trial, and appeal. Among his notable work, Professor Corliss was part of the trial team that secured the conviction of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and the appellate team that upheld the conviction and life sentence of Radovan Karadžić, former President of the Republika Srpska, on similar charges.
Professor Corliss is co-chair of the Junior International Law Scholars Association (JILSA) and was a member of the American Society of International Law delegation to the Stand Tall for the Rule of Law Summit in Lviv, Ukraine in 2023. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and he will be a visiting fellow at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands in fall 2026. His legal commentary has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Miami Herald, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Earlier in his career, Professor Corliss clerked for Justice Margaret L. Workman of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and was a litigation associate at K&L Gates LLP in Pittsburgh.
A native of Wetzel County, West Virginia, Professor Corliss earned his J.D. from Cornell Law School, an M.A. in history from Universiteit Leiden as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, and an A.B. in comparative religion from Harvard University.
Publications, Research, and Intellectual Contributions
- The War Crime of Spreading Terror, 51 Yale Journal of International Law 219 (2026)
- An International Prosecutor as U.S. Special Counsel, 2025 Utah L. Rev. 675 (2025)
- Digital Terror Crimes, 62 Columbia J. Transnat’l L. 58 (2023)
- Human Trafficking as “Modern Slavery”: The Trouble with Trafficking as Enslavement in International Law, 71 S. Carolina L. Rev. 603 (2020)
- Prosecuting Members of ISIS for the Destruction of Cultural Property, 45 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 183 (2018)
- Truth in Advertising: Applying Commercial Speech Regulations to the Secondary Dissemination of Scientific Research Publications, 90 St. John’s L. Rev. 883 (2016)
- Called On: A Novel Reflecting the Changing Nature of Legal Education, 6 Houston L. Rev. Off the Record 199 (2016)
- Truth Commissions and the Limits of Restorative Justice: Lessons Learned in South Africa's Cradock Four Case, 21 Mich. St. Int’l L. Rev. 273 (2013)
Education
- J.D., Cornell Law School, 2009
- M.A., Universiteit Leiden, 2006
- A.B., Harvard University, 2003
