Frédéric Sourgens

Frédéric G. Sourgens is the James McCulloch Chair in Energy Law at Tulane Law School and Director of the Tulane Center for Energy Law. He joined the Tulane Law Faculty in 2023. Prior to teaching at Tulane, Sourgens served as the Senator Robert J. Dole Distinguished Professor of Law at Washburn University School of Law.

Sourgens is the co-lead investigator with OPEC’s General Legal Counsel, Leonardo Sempértegui of the energy transition policy and regulatory briefs project for the Organization of Petroleum Producing States (OPEC). He currently serves a chair of the Nuclear Taskforce of the Association International Energy Negotiators. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Institute for Energy Law and on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. He currently serves on the Board of American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA), the Board of the Trans-Lex Principles, and, ex officio, on the Board of the Center for American and International Law. He holds multiple editorial appointments including with the Brill Research Perspectives in International Investment Law and Arbitration as well as the American Review of International Arbitration(Columbia University School of Law) and, until 2024, served as Editor-in-Chief of Oxford University Press' Investment Claims reporter of international arbitral awards between states and foreign investors.  He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and, in 2011, received an Official Proclamation of Gratitude from the Mongolian Minister of Justice.  

His most recent books are The Transnational Law of Renewable Energy with Catherine Banet and Teddy Baldwin (Oxford University Press 2024),  International Legal Principles of Energy Transition with Leonardo Sempértegui (Oxford University Press 2023), Good Faith in Transnational Law, A Pluralist Account (Brill Nijhoff 2022) (Winner ABILA International Law Book of the Year 2023), and International Petroleum Law and Transactions (Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, 2020) (with Owen Anderson, John S Dzienkowski, Keith Hall, John Lowe, Harry Sullivan & Jacqueline Weaver). His Evidence in International Investment Arbitration (Oxford University Press 2018) (with Kabir Duggal & Ian Laird) is regularly cited in international arbitral awards.  

Before entering academia, Sourgens practiced law at Fulbright & Jaworski LLP in Houston (now Norton Rose Fulbright) and Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP in Washington DC (now Milbank).