Mark D. Agrast

Mark David Agrast served as the seventh Executive Director and Executive Vice President of the American Society of International Law from 2014-2022.

He previously served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice and held senior staff positions with the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served as a senior vice president and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and practiced international law with the Washington office of Jones Day. 

Mr. Agrast is a Vice President of the World Justice Project (WJP). He played a central role in the development of the WJP Rule of Law Index, which measures countries’ adherence to the rule of law.

He also has served in numerous leadership capacities in the American Bar Association, including as a member of its Board of Governors and its Executive Committee. He is a longtime member of the ABA House of Delegates, and has served as chair of various ABA entities, including the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, the Commission on Immigration, and the Commission on Disability Rights. He is a  life fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Mr. Agrast is a former member of the Board of Governors of the Washington Foreign Law Society and is a past co-chair of the National LGBT Bar. He currently serves on the Washington D.C. Regional Board of the Anti-Defamation League.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Agrast graduated summa cum laude from Case Western Reserve University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He pursued his postgraduate studies as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, and received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was editor in chief of the Yale Journal of International Law. He is a member of the Supreme Court Bar and was admitted to practice in Ohio in 1986 and the District of Columbia in 1988.