Joanna Harrington, BA, JD, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

international law foreign relations law international organizations United Nations international human rights law interim measures international legal cooperation extradition transnational criminal law corporate criminality corruption foreign bribery non-trial resolutions deferred prosecution agreements asset recovery

About

Joanna Harrington is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the holder of the Eldon Foote Chair in International Business and Law. She also serves as the Associate Dean Research for the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and as Special Advisor to the Vice-President (Research and Innovation).

A law professor for over 20 years, her work examines issues of foreign relations law, the interaction between constitutional law and public international law, human rights, extradition, and transnational crime. Recent work has focussed on the foreign corruption of public officials, the corporate commission of transnational crimes, and the use of non-trial resolutions, such as deferred prosecution agreements and victim-centred settlements. Her publications can be found in law journals and edited collections, including the American Journal of International Law, The Canadian Yearbook of International Law, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the McGill Law Journal, and the Supreme Court Law Review, as well as The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution and the Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law. She is also a co-author of the Canadian textbook, International Law: Doctrine, Practice, and Theory, now in its third edition, and a long-serving member of the board of directors of the Canadian Council on International Law.

Prior to her service as the college associate dean research, she served a five-year term as an associate dean with the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research (now the Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies). In 2015, she was a visiting research fellow with the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the University of Oxford, and in 2016, she held the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Policy Studies in the Department of Government at the University of Texas in Austin. From 2016-2023, she was a member of the SSHRC-funded Canadian Partnership for International Justice, which received the 2022 SSHRC Impact Award-Partnership Award and a 2023 Governor General's Innovation Award.

A supporter of connecting academic research with communities beyond the university, her work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitution Committee of the UK House of Lords, Canada's Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in the House of Commons, Canada's Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, the Parliament of Australia's Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, the OECD Working Group on Bribery, the International Law Association's Committee on International Human Rights Law and Practice, and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Media mentions include The New York Times, The South China Morning Post, CBC News, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Maclean's.

Beyond the academy, her experience includes a two-year university-to-government secondment as the scholar-in-residence with the legal bureau of Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada), and a three-year term as a part-time member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. She has represented Canada as a lawyer-diplomat at the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. She has also worked on capacity building projects as a consultant with the United Nations Development Programme, testified as an expert witness in court and before parliamentary committees, and served as an independent investigator for complaints of harassment and employee misconduct. She has assisted counsel in private practice on matters of immunity, international human rights law, foreign bribery, and extradition, and contributed to training programs for judges, diplomats, and military lawyers. Before becoming an academic, she worked for a leading member of the House of Lords on the enactment of the Human Rights Act, the creation of the Scottish Parliament, and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

Educated in Canada and the United Kingdom, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science from the University of British Columbia, a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Victoria, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in law from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Tapp scholar at Gonville and Caius College. She also holds a diploma in human rights law from the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute in Italy. After articling with one of Canada's largest law firms, she qualified as a lawyer in British Columbia in 1995, and Ontario in 2002. She also worked as a foreign-trained lawyer in London, England through the Pegasus Trust scheme with the Inns of Court.

Her career has led to several honours, including the Canadian Bar Association-Alberta Branch & Law Society of Alberta Distinguished Service Award in Legal Scholarship 2022, the Canadian Council on International Law Scholarly Paper Award 2019, the Honourable Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award 2019, the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Prize for Academic Excellence 2018, a Fulbright Scholar award 2016, a Killam Annual Professorship 2012, and the Martha Cook Piper Research Prize 2007.

Research Funding Acknowledgement: Professor Harrington's research has been supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), specifically a SSHRC International Opportunities Fund Grant 2005-2007, a SSHRC Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences Grant 2008-2009, a SSHRC Standard Research Grant 2010-2013, and a SSHRC Partnership Grant 2016-2023.

The CSSH Office of Research has a dedicated webpage -- https://www.ualberta.ca/social-sciences-humanities/office-of-research/index.html

LAW 506 - Public International Law

A survey of the foundational principles, structure and institutions of public international law, including the nature of the international legal system, the sources of international law, and the relevance of international law to the Canadian legal system. The role of international organizations, such as the United Nations, will also be discussed.

Browse more courses taught by Joanna Harrington