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 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). She is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and holds the Eldon Foote Chair in International Business and Law.

As a legal academic, Professor Harrington specializes in matters of general international law and its national application, the law of international organizations, international human rights law, international and transnational criminal law, and international legal cooperation, including extradition. 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. She has taught law in Australia, Canada, China, England, Japan, Puerto Rico and Suriname, and held visiting scholar appointments at the University of New South Wales, the University of Oxford, and the University of Texas at Austin, the latter as the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Policy Studies. From 2010-2015, she was an associate dean with the now-named Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and from 2016-2023, she was a member of the SSHRC-funded Canadian Partnership for International Justice, which received a 2022 SSHRC Impact Award and a 2023 Governor General’s Innovation Award.

A supporter of research of relevance beyond academia, her work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitution Committee of the UK House of Lords, Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, 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, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and in Library of Parliament briefing papers in the UK and Canada. 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 three-year term as a part-time member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and a two-year secondment to the legal bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada), advising government on matters of international criminal law, international human rights law, and corporate social responsibility. She has represented Canada as a lawyer-diplomat in the negotiation of treaties, declarations and resolutions 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 testified as an expert witness in court and before parliamentary committees, worked on capacity building projects as a consultant with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and served as an independent investigator of workplace complaints of harassment and misconduct. She has assisted counsel in private practice on matters of diplomatic immunity, human rights, foreign bribery, and extradition, and contributed to training programs for judges, diplomats, and military lawyers. She is also a long-serving member of the board of directors of the Canadian Council on International Law. 

Professor Harrington holds a Bachelor of Arts in history and political science from the University of British Columbia, a Juris Doctor from the University of Victoria, and a Doctor of Philosophy in law from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Tapp scholar at Gonville and Caius College and a Pegasus Scholar with the Inns of Court. She was also awarded the 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 served as the parliamentary legal officer with a member of Britain's House of Lords for the enactment of the Human Rights Act and other measures of significant constitutional reform before becoming a full-time legal academic.

Career honours include the Canadian Bar Association-Alberta Branch & Law Society of Alberta Distinguished Service Award in Legal Scholarship 2022, the inaugural 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 supported in part by 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.

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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.

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