Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg

Associate Professor of Law

Dr. Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg is a scholar of public international law whose work focuses on the structure and transformation of the international legal order. Her research spans general international law, international investment law, business and human rights, and international dispute settlement, with a particular interest in nonstate actors as addressees of international law.

A central strand of her scholarship examines the processes through which collective nonstate entities—such as business corporations, armed groups, and nongovernmental organizations—come to be governed directly by an international legal order traditionally centered on states, and the circumstances in which such entities have rights and obligations directly under international law.

Her monograph, Regulating Collective Non-State Entities in International Law: Rights and Obligations, is under contract with Oxford University Press. She is also the lead editor of International Law and Time: Narratives and Techniques (Springer, 2022), a collection examining the significance of time, change, and temporality for the international legal order. Her scholarship has appeared in the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Business and Human Rights Journal, The International Lawyer, and other publications. Her recent and forthcoming work includes "Reconceptualizing Legal Personality for Normative Inclusion: Conduct-Based International Law," in Reconstructing International Law (Oxford University Press). She has presented her research at major international-law conferences, including the Annual Meetings of the American Society of International Law and the European Society of International Law.

Before joining Stetson Law as an Associate Professor, Dr. Van der Ploeg was a member of the faculty at the University of Nottingham School of Law, where she also served as Head of the Business, Trade and Human Rights Unit of the Human Rights Law Centre. In 2025–26, she was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Law Library of Congress. Earlier in her academic career, she held visiting fellowships at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context at Queen Mary, University of London and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

Dr. Van der Ploeg received her Ph.D. in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva with its highest distinction, summa cum laude avec les félicitations du jury. Her doctoral thesis received the 2019 Swiss Network for International Studies Award for the best doctoral thesis in international studies submitted at a Swiss university. She holds an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School, which she attended as a Michigan Grotius Fellow, and degrees in law, political science, international relations, and European studies from Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.

Before entering academia, Dr. Van der Ploeg worked in international dispute resolution and public international law in both international institutions and private practice. She served as Judicial Assistant to Judge Sir Christopher Greenwood at the International Court of Justice. She subsequently practiced with Debevoise & Plimpton in London and earlier with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Prague, advising on international arbitration, investment protection, state responsibility, treaty law, immunities, economic sanctions, human rights, and the interaction between international and domestic law. She is admitted to practice in New York and the Czech Republic.

At Stetson Law, Dr. Van der Ploeg serves as Faculty Co-Director for International Programming and Faculty Advisor to the International Law Society. She works to strengthen opportunities for students interested in international law by connecting academic study with international programs, professional and career opportunities, institutional partnerships, and engagement with the broader international-law community. She teaches International Law, International Trade Regulation, Business and Human Rights, and Torts.