Stuart Kerr has nearly 40 years of experience handling legal, regulatory, trade, dispute resolution, legal reform, and technical assistance issues throughout the developing world. He has advised international organizations, corporations, and governments in scores of developing and emerging economies.
Stuart currently serves at the President of the International Law Institute (ILI). From 2015 until 2020 he was Counsel and Africa Practice Coordinator to the international law firm Jones Day. He joined the firm in 2015 after a decade as the legal and regulatory director of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. MCC, founded in 2004, is an independent U.S. government development agency that provides major project grants — averaging $300 million per country — to developing countries, primarily in Africa, that demonstrate better governance practices than their peer countries. While at MCC, Stuart developed and helped implement projects in judicial reform, trade, alternative dispute resolution, and anticorruption. He also was senior counsel for Europe and Eurasia at the Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) for three years. Prior to CLDP, he served from 1988 to 2002 as ILI’s executive director. Stuart is a regular speaker and writer on law and development subjects. While at MCC, he gave more than 100 presentations on rule of law issues at locations as diverse as the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, the Supreme Court of Singapore, the Palais Royal (Conseil Constitutionnel) in Paris, and the House of Lords in London. Stuart has served on the boards of academic organizations, foundations, NGOs, and bar groups in the U.S. and internationally.