Frederick Davis

New York, Paris

USA

France

I am a former federal prosecutor with extensive trial experience in the United States, including election to the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers. Since 1980, I have been a litigation partner in top US law firms, most recently Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP. In 2006 I moved to France where I sat for the Paris Bar and practiced French law for almost 12 years.

This included participating in criminal trials in French courts (leading to the acquittal of a major international corporation of criminal charges), and extensive experience handling multi-jurisdictional investigations applying both civil law and common law criminal justice norms. I also served as adviser to the Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

For my work representing French interests, in 2002 the French government named me a “Chevalier” of the National Order of Merit of France; for my work developing relations between France and the United States in the area of criminal justice, the French government recently named me a “Chevalier” of the Legion of Honor.

Since 2016 I have combined my practice with teaching academic courses on comparative criminal justice and cross-border criminal investigations, first at the University of Amsterdam and now at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School, where I am a Lecturer in Law, as well as at the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature and elsewhere in France.

I have published widely in English and in French in the area of transnational criminal practice: my principal bibliography is listed under Publications in this site together with links to many of my articles. In 2019 Cambridge University Press published my book American Criminal Justice: An Introduction, of which a French version is in preparation.