Arato’s research focuses on the law of treaties, international investment law and arbitration, international trade, contracts, corporations, and private law theory. His article “The Private Law Critique of International Investment Law” won the 2019 Francis Deák Prize for best article by a younger author published in the American Journal of International Law, as well as the inaugural ICCA Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez Memorial Prize. He also co-edits an open-access casebook on international trade law, The Law of the World Trade Organization (with J.H.H. Weiler, S. Cho, and I. Feichtner).
Arato serves as a member of the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law. He is active in the governance of the American Society of International Law, having recently served on the executive council and as co-chair of the international economic law interest group. He also serves as chair of the Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute Settlement and as a member of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration Academic Council. Since 2018, Arato has served as an observer delegate to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Working Group III (ISDS Reform).
Before joining the Michigan Law faculty, Arato was a professor of law and associate dean of faculty research and scholarship at Brooklyn Law School and before that an associate-in-law at Columbia Law School. He previously worked as an associate in the international arbitration group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where his practice focused on international investment disputes and international commercial arbitration.
