Pitts is an international
attorney, human rights activist, businessman, and law educator who brings practical as well as academic experience to bear in lecturing on human rights and international business at law schools and universities including
Stanford and
Oxford. Former Chief Legal Officer of
Nokia and partner at law firm
Baker & McKenzie, Pitts has served as founding executive, entrepreneur, and investor in technology startups including
Tellme Networks. Among awards Pitts has received are the Peacemaker of the Year award from the Dallas Peace Center, and the Dallas Bar Association's Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year award, in addition to other pro bono and outstanding service awards from various bar associations and other organizations. Recent pro bono litigation in which he has been involved includes EPIC’s successful lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and
Transportation Security Administration against the “naked body scanners,” as well as the Kiobel litigation to preserve the Alien Tort Statute as a corporate accountability remedy. He is a frequent keynote speaker at academic conferences, international conferences, world affairs councils, civil liberties conferences, and foreign policy committee meetings. For over two decades, he has represented the United States government as well as nongovernmental organizations such as
Amnesty International,
Human Rights First (fka Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), and the Advocates for Human Rights at the United Nations. He was an advisor to the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, and is a board or advisory board member of other organizations including The Negotiations Center, the London-Based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the ACLU of Dallas. He blogs at
www.CSRLaw.org, and his writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines ranging from The Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, from The Nation and The New Republic to Liberty magazine and
The American Conservative, and from the Washington Spectator to Foreign Affairs. He has testified before foreign parliaments and the U.S. Congress, appears frequently in international media on topics including international law, privacy, national security, and human rights, and his broadcast commentaries have appeared among other places on National Public Radio and
Public Radio International. Pitts is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Pacific Council on International Policy in San Francisco. ==Works==