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Caroline Davidson

Professor of Law

Headshot of Caroline Davidson

Contact Information

Salem Campus

Address
Collins Legal Center 457
245 Winter Street SE
Salem  Oregon  97301
U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6821

Biography

Professor Davidson teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, international criminal law, and international human rights. Her scholarship explores international and comparative criminal law and human rights, in recent years with a focus on sexual and gender-based violence.

Davidson brings to Willamette extensive international experience. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Chile's Faculty of Law from 2017-2018 where she conducted field research on domestic Chilean prosecutions for dictatorship-era atrocities. Prior to joining Willamette, she worked as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, where she served on the trial teams in two multi-year, multi-defendant trials against military and civilian leaders for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In 2005, Davidson worked on a team of international lawyers assisting with domestic atrocity investigations and prosecutions in the Prosecutor’s Office of the then newly-created State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. During law school, Davidson interned at Human Rights Watch in Brazil. Prior to law school, Davidson worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co. in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Davidson also has experience in criminal defense and civil litigation domestically. She served as an assistant federal public defender in Portland, Oregon, where she represented indigent clients in a variety of federal indictment matters and in federal habeas corpus litigation. She worked as a litigation associate at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin (now Arnold & Porter) in San Francisco.

Davidson clerked for Judge Alfred T. Goodwin of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an executive editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. She studied history and romance languages at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

Davidson speaks Spanish and French fluently and is proficient (albeit rusty) in Portuguese, German, and Italian. She is admitted to the state bar of Oregon (active) and California (inactive status).

Selected Publications

Opinions & Editorials

Now Should We Speak Femicide? Ms.Magazine.com, June 15, 2021.

Education

  • JD, Harvard Law School, cum laude
  • BA, Princeton University, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
Willamette University

Faculty Support

Address
Willamette University
College of Law
245 Winter Street SE
Salem Oregon 97301 U.S.A.
Phone
(503) 370-6405