Profile

Abby Cohen Smutny is a partner in the Washington DC office of White & Case LLP. She is widely recognized as a leading expert on international arbitration, with particular expertise in investor-State disputes and disputes involving issues of public international law. She has served as counsel both for States and for investors in dozens of cases in her more than 20 years of practice.

Ms. Smutny is a member of the American Law Institute and serves on the Advisory Committee for the Restatement of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration of the American Law Institute. She also served as a member of the Special Drafting Committee of the ICC Task Force on Arbitration With States and State Entities. She is Vice-Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, Co-Editor in Chief of World Arbitration and Mediation Review, a member of the Editorial Committee of the Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Arbitration. She is a former Vice-Chair of the Arbitration Committee of the International Bar Association and Chair of its Sub-Committee on Investment Treaty Arbitration. She is also a former Chair of the International Law Section of the District of Columbia Bar. Ms. Smutny has served several terms as a member of the ASIL's Executive Council, and also has served as a member of the Society's Executive Committee.

Ms. Smutny completed her studies at Vassar College, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Universite des Langues et Lettres de Grenoble, and the University of Chicago School of Law.