Biography

Dr. Marsha A. Echols is the Director of The World Food Law Institute and a Professor at Howard University School of Law, where she teaches commercial, international business and trade, and world food law. She is a recognized expert in the fields of international food regulation, international trade and dispute settlement.

Professor Echols has extensive international dispute resolution experience, having served terms as a Member of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal and as a Panelist in a World Trade Organization dispute between India and the European Union, among other activities. She was the Vice Chair of the International Dispute Resolution Committee on the DC Bar.

She is the author of several books and law journal articles about international food regulation and frequently is invited in the United States and internationally to speak about food law and policy, and about international trade. Professor Echols has taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies (HEI) in Geneva and in Beijing and Shenyang, China. She has lectured at HEC Paris, Harvard Law School, the University of Nantes in France and Eduardo Mondlane Faculty of Law in Mozambique, among others. She often participates on legal panels and on delegations to meetings of the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

Dr. Echols studied and worked in Belgium, and worked in Switzerland and Washington, D.C. before joining the faculty at Howard University School of Law. She also served as an international trade negotiator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and specialized in international agribusiness transactions while engaged in the private practice of law.

Professor Echols is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law. She was the Liaison to UNIDROIT for the ABA Section of International Law, having previously served on the Section Council, and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. She is a Board member of the Friends of the National Arboretum.

A graduate of Howard University (B.A., Phi Beta Kappa), she holds advanced degrees from Georgetown University Law Center (J.D.), the Free University of Brussels (LL.M.) and Columbia University Law School (LL.M., J.S.D.).

Professor Echols is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.

She speaks, reads and writes French.

Publications

GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS FOR FOOD PRODUCTS 2nd ed. (Kluwer Law International, Fall 2016)

GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS FOR FOODS AND OTHER NOTIONS OF PLACE AND TRADITION (Kluwer Law International 2008 )

FOOD SAFETY AND THE WTO: THE INTERPLAY OF CULTURE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Kluwer Law International 2001)

Right to Food, National Security and Trade: Resolving Regime Conflicts, 20 UCLA J. Int’l L. and For. Aff. (2016)

“Institutional Cooperation and Norm Creation in International Organizations: The FAO-WHO Codex Alimentarius”, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE (Oxford University Press 2005)

“Cocoa and Food Security”, Proceedings of the 18th Annual Nutrition Conference of the International Union of Nutritional Scientists (South Africa) 2005

“Expressing the Value of Agrodiversity and Its Know-How in International Sales”, Howard Law Journal 2004

“Geographical Indications for Foods, TRIPS and the Doha Development Agenda”, Journal of African Law 2003

“The WTO Biotechnology Dispute”, Cumberland Law Review 2003-2004

“Solutions in Terms of Self-Regulation or Self-Imposed Moral Codes of Business Corporations,” published in WTO AND CONCERNS REGARDING ANIMALS AND NATURE (Wold Legal Publishers — Netherlands 2003)

“Food Safety Regulation in the European Union Food Safety and the WTO: The Interplay of Culture, Science and Technology and the United States: Different Cultures, Different Laws”, Columbia Journal of International Law 2001

Professional Contributions

Member, District of Columbia Bar

Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law