Joanna Harrington is a Professor with the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. She specializes in the fields of international law and constitutional law; a focus that includes foreign relations law, including treaty-making, the law and practice of international organizations, the interplay between international human rights law and national bills of rights, and issues of international and transnational criminal law.
Her publications often explore the national relevance of international law obligations, with past work contributing to law and policy discussions on the role for national parliaments and provincial legislative assemblies in the making of international treaties, the balance between protecting human rights and securing cross-border cooperation to prosecute serious crime, and the need for interim measures of protection in urgent human rights situations.
This work has been published in leading journals, including the American Journal of International Law, The Canadian Yearbook of International Law, the International & Comparative Law Quarterly, the McGill Law Journal, and the Supreme Court Law Review. She has also contributed to several highly-regarded edited collections, including The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution and the Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law. She is the author of the Public International Law title for the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada series (LexisNexis, 2010; reissue 2014; reissue 2019), a co-author of International Law: Doctrine, Practice, and Theory, 2nd ed (Irwin Law, 2014), and a co-editor of Experts, Networks and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her research expertise has been cited in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post and Macleans, among others.
Her work also benefits from her experiences in practice, including a two-year university-to-government secondment with the Legal Affairs Bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada), and previously, her service as a legal adviser on matters of constitutional reform for a member of Britain's House of Lords during the passage of the Human Rights Act, the creation of a Scottish Parliament, and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
She has represented Canada as a legal adviser in the negotiation of international texts 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 she has served twice in New York as a member of Canada's official delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. She has also served as a consultant to international and national organizations, testified as an expert witness before parliamentary committees, and assisted counsel in private practice on matters of diplomatic immunities, extradition, human rights, national security, and foreign corruption. She currently serves as a part-time member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
A lawyer since 1995 and a legal academic since 1999, her work has earned the Martha Cook Piper Research Prize (2007), a Killam Annual Professorship (2012), a Fulbright Scholar award and Visiting Research Chair (2016), and the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Prize for Academic Excellence (2018). She has held visiting research appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales in Australia, and she has taught law as an invited professor at post-secondary institutions in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Puerto Rico and Suriname. She has also served a five-year term as an associate dean with university-wide responsibilities for the quality and standards of graduate education.
She holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia, a J.D. from the University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Cambridge, where she held a W.M. Tapp studentship at Gonville and Caius College and a Pegasus Trust scholarship from 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.
Her publications often explore the national relevance of international law obligations, with past work contributing to law and policy discussions on the role for national parliaments and provincial legislative assemblies in the making of international treaties, the balance between protecting human rights and securing cross-border cooperation to prosecute serious crime, and the need for interim measures of protection in urgent human rights situations.
This work has been published in leading journals, including the American Journal of International Law, The Canadian Yearbook of International Law, the International & Comparative Law Quarterly, the McGill Law Journal, and the Supreme Court Law Review. She has also contributed to several highly-regarded edited collections, including The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution and the Routledge Handbook of Transnational Criminal Law. She is the author of the Public International Law title for the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada series (LexisNexis, 2010; reissue 2014; reissue 2019), a co-author of International Law: Doctrine, Practice, and Theory, 2nd ed (Irwin Law, 2014), and a co-editor of Experts, Networks and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her research expertise has been cited in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post and Macleans, among others.
Her work also benefits from her experiences in practice, including a two-year university-to-government secondment with the Legal Affairs Bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada), and previously, her service as a legal adviser on matters of constitutional reform for a member of Britain's House of Lords during the passage of the Human Rights Act, the creation of a Scottish Parliament, and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
She has represented Canada as a legal adviser in the negotiation of international texts 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 she has served twice in New York as a member of Canada's official delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. She has also served as a consultant to international and national organizations, testified as an expert witness before parliamentary committees, and assisted counsel in private practice on matters of diplomatic immunities, extradition, human rights, national security, and foreign corruption. She currently serves as a part-time member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
A lawyer since 1995 and a legal academic since 1999, her work has earned the Martha Cook Piper Research Prize (2007), a Killam Annual Professorship (2012), a Fulbright Scholar award and Visiting Research Chair (2016), and the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Prize for Academic Excellence (2018). She has held visiting research appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales in Australia, and she has taught law as an invited professor at post-secondary institutions in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Puerto Rico and Suriname. She has also served a five-year term as an associate dean with university-wide responsibilities for the quality and standards of graduate education.
She holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia, a J.D. from the University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Cambridge, where she held a W.M. Tapp studentship at Gonville and Caius College and a Pegasus Trust scholarship from 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.