Since graduating from Berkeley Law in 2009, Brian has served as a State Department official, General Counsel of a venture-backed space company, and Co-founder of a technology startup.
From 2009 to 2017 Brian served in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, with stints representing the United States in international arbitrations and litigation, negotiating and implementing international agreements, “engineering” international cooperation in the Arctic, outer space, and other cold, dark places, and advising the Department’s East Asia and Pacific Bureau. Brian served as head of the United States delegation to the United Nations space law body (2012-16), and co-chair of the Arctic Council’s Task Force on Arctic Marine Cooperation, an intergovernmental process to design and negotiate a governance framework for the Arctic Ocean (2015-17).
Brian served as General Counsel and Secretary of Planetary Resources, a pioneering space exploration company, from May 2017 through its acquisition by ConsenSys, a blockchain venture studio, in October of 2018. Following the acquisition, Brian co-founded ConsenSys Space, a startup developing open source platforms for global public participation in space endeavors.
Brian R Israel is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.