Joanna Harrington, BA, JD, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

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

About

Joanna Harrington is a Professor and the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law. She also holds the Eldon Foote Chair in International Business and Law.

A law professor for 25 years, her work examines issues of 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. She has published widely 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 widely used textbook, International Law: Doctrine, Practice, and Theory, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council on International Law.

Professor Harrington has held visiting appointments at the University of New South Wales, the University of Oxford, and the University of Texas at Austin, the latter as a Fulbright Scholar and Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair in Policy Studies. She has taught law in Australia, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, and Suriname. From 2016-2023, she was a member of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice -- a $2.5 million SSHRC-funded research project bringing together scholars, practitioners and NGOs to co-create knowledge to address impunity for international crimes. The Partnership won a 2023 Governor General’s Innovation Award in recognition of exceptional and transformational innovation, as well as a 2022 SSHRC Impact Award. Professor Harrington is also an experienced university leader, having served as an associate dean with the now-named Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies from 2010-2015, and as the inaugural associate dean research for the College of Social Sciences and Humanities from 2022-2025. She also served as the special advisor to the Vice-President (Research and Innovation) and the university's SSHRC Leader, before becoming the Vice-Dean of Law in February 2025.

The impact of her scholarship extends beyond academia to influence both policy making and legal practice. Her work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitution Committee of the 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, 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, Professor Harrington has made significant contributions to Canadian and international legal practice. She served for three years as an appointed member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and spent two years on secondment to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada), where she advised the government on matters of international criminal law and international human rights law. She also represented Canada as a lawyer-diplomat in multilateral negotiations at the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and twice served as a member of Canada's official delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. She has also testified as an expert witness in court and before parliamentary committees, and her consultancy work has included capacity-building projects with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Before becoming an academic, she worked as the legal adviser for a member of Britain's House of Lords for the enactment of the Human Rights Act, the creation of a Scottish Parliament, and the implementation of the Northern Ireland peace agreement.

A British-born Canadian lawyer and legal academic, she 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 also earned a diploma in human rights law from the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute in Italy. She articled with one of Canada's largest law firms and qualified as a lawyer in British Columbia in 1995, and then Ontario in 2002. 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 Canadian Association of Law Teachers Prize for Academic Excellence (2018), and a Fulbright Scholar Award (2016). She has received several Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants, and is a past recipient of the Honourable Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award (2019), a Killam Annual Professorship (2012), and the Martha Cook Piper Research Prize (2007).

Research

Representative Publications

General International Law

• Joanna Harrington, Public International Law, a title for the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada series (Markham, ON: LexisNexis, 2010, 2014, 2019 & 2023)
• John H. Currie, Craig Forcese, Joanna Harrington & Valerie Oosterveld, International Law: Doctrine, Practice, and Theory, 3rd ed (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2022) (2nd ed, 2017)
• Joanna Harrington, “Canada and International Law: Supporting A Rules-Based Approach to International Relations” in Robert W Murray & Paul Gecelovsky, eds, The Palgrave Handbook of Canada in International Affairs (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2021), ch 12, 251-271
• Holly Cullen, Joanna Harrington & Catherine Renshaw, eds, Experts, Networks and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
• Joanna Harrington, “Exploring the ‘Canadian’ in the Canadian Yearbook of International Law” (2012) 50 The Canadian Yearbook of International Law 3-33

Peace and Security, the UN Security Council, and International Governance

• Joanna Harrington, “The Working Methods of the United Nations Security Council: Maintaining the Implementation of Change” (2017) 66:1 International & Comparative Law Quarterly 39-77
• Joanna Harrington, “Use of Force, Rule-of-law Restraints, and Process: Unfinished Business for the Responsibility to Protect Concept” in Jeremy Farrall & Hilary Charlesworth, eds, Strengthening the Rule of Law through the UN Security Council (London: Routledge, 2016), ch 16, 224-238
• Joanna Harrington, “Responsibility While Protecting and the Impact on Responsibility to Protect” (2013) 8:1-2 Chinese Review of International Law 79-93 (translated into Chinese)
• Joanna Harrington, “R2P and Natural Disasters” in W. Andy Knight & Fraser Egerton, eds, The Routledge Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect (London: Routledge, 2012), ch 11, 141-151

Foreign Bribery, Corporate Criminality, Victims and Deferred Prosecution Agreements

• Joanna Harrington, “Negotiating Transnational Corporate Criminality” in Robert J Currie, ed, Transnational and Cross-border Criminal Law: Canadian Perspectives (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2023), ch 14, 322-345
• Joanna Harrington, “Providing for Victim Redress within the Legislative Scheme for Tackling Foreign Corruption” (2020) 43:1 Dalhousie Law Journal 245-280
• Joanna Harrington, “Addressing the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials: Developments and Challenges within the Canadian Legal Landscape” (2018) 56 The Canadian Yearbook of International Law 98-143

Extradition Law

• Joanna Harrington, “Canadian Extradition Law after Meng Wanzhou: Paths for Improvement” (2024) 8 PKI Global Justice Journal 1
• Joanna Harrington, “Expanding the Role for the Minister of Foreign Affairs in a World of Conditional Extradition” (2022) 1:1 Transnational Criminal Law Review 34-51
• Joanna Harrington, “The Making of Modern International Extradition Law” in Neil Boister, Sabine Gless & Florian Jeßberger, eds, Histories of Transnational Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), ch 20, 276-286
• Joanna Harrington, “Extradition, Assurances and Human Rights: Guidance from the Supreme Court of Canada in India v. Badesha” (2019) 88 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 273-293
• Joanna Harrington, “Extradition of Transnational Criminals” in Neil Boister & Robert J. Currie, eds, Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law (London: Routledge, 2014), ch 10, 153-166
• Joanna Harrington, “The Absent Dialogue: Extradition and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (2006) 32 Queen’s Law Journal 82-134
• Joanna Harrington, “The Role for Human Rights Obligations in Canadian Extradition Law” (2005) 43 The Canadian Yearbook of International Law 45-100

International and Comparative Human Rights Law

• Joanna Harrington, “The Legitimacy of Interim Measures from the Perspective of a State: The Example of Canada” in Eva Rieter & Karin Zwaan, eds, Urgency and Human Rights: The Protective Potential and Legitimacy of Interim Measures (The Hague: TMC Asser Press, 2021), ch 6, 115-134
• Joanna Harrington, “Monitoring and the Referral of Criminal Cases between Jurisdictions: An ICTR Contribution to Best Practice” in Charles C. Jalloh & Alhagi B.M. Marong, eds, Promoting Accountability under International Law for Gross Human Rights Violations in Africa: Essays in Honour of Prosecutor Hassan B. Jallow (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Brill, 2015), ch 22, 478-497
• Joanna Harrington, “Canada and the United Nations Human Rights Council: Dissent and Division” (2010) 60:1 University of New Brunswick Law Journal 78-115
• Joanna Harrington, “Canada, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and Universal Periodic Review” (2009) 18:2 Constitutional Forum 79-93
• Joanna Harrington, “Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Right to be Cold” (2007) 18:3 Fordham Environmental Law Review 513-535; translated into Chinese and published in (2014) 45 National Chung Cheng University Law Journal 1-37
• Joanna Harrington, “The Challenge to the Mandatory Death Penalty in the Commonwealth Caribbean” (2004) 98:1 American Journal of International Law 126-140
• Joanna Harrington, “Punting Terrorists, Assassins and Other Undesirables: Canada, the Human Rights Committee and Requests for Interim Measures of Protection” (2003) 48:1 McGill Law Journal 55-87

Constitutional Law, Treaties and Parliament, Federalism and Foreign Affairs, and the National Application of International Law

• Joanna Harrington, “Interpreting the Charter” in Peter Oliver, Patrick Macklem & Nathalie Des Rosiers, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), ch 29, 621-638
• Joanna Harrington, “The Democratic Challenge of Incorporation: International Human Rights Treaties and National Constitutions” (2007) 38:2 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 217-235
• Joanna Harrington, “Scrutiny and Approval: The Role for Westminster-style Parliaments in Treaty-Making” (2006) 55:1 International & Comparative Law Quarterly 121-159
• Joanna Harrington, “Redressing the Democratic Deficit in Treaty Law Making: (Re-) Establishing a Role for Parliament” (2005) 50:3 McGill Law Journal 465-509
• Joanna Harrington, “The Role for Parliaments in Treaty-Making” in Hilary Charlesworth, Madelaine Chiam, Devika Hovell & George Williams, eds, The Fluid State: International Law and National Legal Systems (Sydney: Federation Press, 2005), ch 3, 34-56
• Joanna Harrington, “The British Approach to Interpretation and Deference in Rights Adjudication” (2004) 23 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 269-303

Recent Commentary

• Joanna Harrington, “Scrutinizing the emergency response,” National Magazine (Canadian Bar Association), 1 March 2022
• Joanna Harrington, “A Plea for Redress: Fines paid in corporate settlement deals must do more for the victims of foreign corruption” National Magazine (Canadian Bar Association) (7 October 2020)
• Joanna Harrington, "Ending side deals would help address gender pay gap at Canadian universities," CBC Opinion, 5 October 2020
• Joanna Harrington, “Lost in the SNC-Lavalin Controversy are the Libyan Victims,” Policy Options Politiques magazine (21 August 2019)
• Joanna Harrington, “SNC-Lavalin: voici pourquoi nous devrions revoir les lois canadiennes sur la corruption à l'étranger,” La Conversation (Canada) (28 February 2019
• Joanna Harrington, “SNC-Lavalin case shows why we should review Canada’s foreign corruption laws,” The Conversation (Canada) (26 February 2019), republished in the National Post (27 February 2019)

Recent Presentations

• Joanna Harrington, “Anti-Corruption Efforts and the Business and Human Rights Agenda,” Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) Workshop on Business and Human Rights: A Comparative Regional Perspective, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 5-6 December 2024
• Joanna Harrington, “International Litigation: Canadian Engagement at the International Court of Justice,” 52nd Annual Conference of the Canadian Council on International Law, Ottawa, 2-3 November 2023
• Joanna Harrington, “Extradition after Meng: Reflections for Future Canadian Extradition Practice,” 51st Annual Conference of the Canadian Council on International Law, Ottawa, 27-28 October 2022
• Joanna Harrington, “The Limits of Customary International Law in the Globalized Economy,” Webinar on The Growing Interdependency of the World Economy: How Customary International Law Plays a Role, McMillan LLP, Vancouver, Canada, 23 February 2021
• Joanna Harrington, “Providing for Victim Redress within the Legislative Scheme for Tackling Foreign Corruption,” American Society of International Law Anti-Corruption Law Interest Group Works-in-Progress Workshop, Tel Aviv, Israel, 16 December 2019
• Joanna Harrington, “The Historical Roots of International Extradition,” Histories of Transnational Criminal Law Conference, Hannover, Germany, 16-18 October 2019
• Joanna Harrington, “Providing for Victim Redress within the Legislative Scheme for Tackling Foreign Corruption,” International Criminal Law Works-in-Progress Workshop, Faculty of Law, Western University, London, Canada, 21 September 2019
• Joanna Harrington, “What Place for Victims within an Anti-Corruption Legislative Scheme?” Corruption, Democracy and Human Rights: Exploring New Avenues in the Fight Against Corruption Conference, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, 20-21 June 2019
• Joanna Harrington, “Recent Developments regarding UN Security Council Working Methods and Veto Restraint Initiatives,” Chatham House Roundtable on International Law relating to Peace and Security, Columbia Law School, New York, USA, 10-11 November 2018
• Joanna Harrington, “A Legal Perspective on the Brexit Negotiations,” International Business Law Section (South), Canadian Bar Association-Alberta Branch, Calgary, 20 June 2017
• Joanna Harrington, “Urgent Human Rights Situations and Interim Measures of Protection: Problems of Compliance, Legitimacy and Effectiveness,” Fulbright Lecture, Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin, 4 May 2016
• Joanna Harrington, “United Nations Security Council Working Methods,” Public International Law Research Seminar Series, All Souls College, University of Oxford, 2 December 2015

Expert Testimony and Submissions

• Testified before the Parliament of Australia's Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth for an inquiry into the Australian Government’s approach to negotiating trade and investment agreements, 20 October 2023, and cited in the Committee's Interim Report released in January 2024
• Invited academic expert for the OECD Working Group on Bribery’s Phase 4 Monitoring Evaluation of Canada, on-site visit to Ottawa, 2 June 2023, with written submission cited in the Working Group on Bribery’s report, released 19 October 2023
• Testified as an expert witness before Canada's House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on extradition law reform, 6 February 2023, and cited in the Committee's report on Reforming Canada's Extradition System, Report No 13, 7 June 2023
• Invited participant, House of Lords International Agreements Committee Roundtable on the Parliamentary Scrutiny of International Agreements, London, United Kingdom, 30 June 2021
• Invited participant, Experts Consultation on the Role for the United Nations General Assembly in Preventing and Responding to Atrocity Crimes, University of Ottawa Human Rights Research and Education Centre, 25 November 2020
• Invited submission of written evidence to the UK Parliament’s House of Lords European Union Select Committee International Agreements Sub-Committee for its inquiry into the working practices of treaty scrutiny, UK Parliament Reference No TWP0001, and cited in the Committee’s report on Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices, HL Paper 97, 10 July 2020
• Invited participant, Virtual Expert Consultation on the Draft Guidelines on Stolen Assets and Human Rights, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 10 June 2020

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.

LAW 526 - Independent Research Paper

Selected students are afforded the opportunity to undertake an independent research project on an approved topic under the direct supervision of a full-time Faculty member resulting in the submission of a research paper of 8.000 to 10,000 words. In addition to advanced knowledge; the course is designed to enhance problem solving skills, legal research methodologies and techniques and legal writing and communication skills. Material submitted for assessment in another course cannot be used in an independent research project.

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