Sarah Annabella Riley Case

SSRN: ssrn.com/author=3497555

Biography

Dr. Sarah Annabella Riley Case is an Assistant Professor whose research and teaching focus on slavery and the law, colonialisms, critical race theory, Black studies, Indigenous critique, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), arts, and governing the natural world. She is the convenor of the Collaboratory for Black Legal Poethics. 

Before joining McGill, she was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy. She served as a Special Advisor to the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity. She taught as well at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Dr. Riley Case’s work crosses over law, history, conceptions of justice, representations of nature, and the arts. Her publications include ‘To Protest for Black Life during the Pandemic: Resistance and Freedom in a Settler State’ (Canadian Journal of Law and Society), winner of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers scholarly paper award, where she considers qualities of protest, including Black presence, practicing care, and calling for abolition, inspired by Black feminism. As well, ‘The Colour of Jus Cogens’ with Frédéric Mégret (in Mohsen al Attar, Ata Hindi and Claire Smith, eds., Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialized Boundaries), which addresses how Black, Indigenous and Third World appeals to jus cogens norms, such as slavery, genocide and apartheid, are sidelined due to racial stratifications; ‘Looking to the Horizon: The Meanings of Reparations for Unbearable Crises’ (AJIL Unbound), where she explores overlapping Caribbean reparations claims for slavery, colonialism and climate change; and ‘Race, Ecology, Nature and International Law: A Dialogue with Sarah Riley Case’ (forthcoming in TWAILR Dialogues), where she and Usha Natarajan explore how racialization and ecology are intertwined in colonial harms and calls for redress.

She is currently working on converting a paper written for grassroots organizations into a book focused on exceeding settler carceral violence, including narratives of harm, namely 'Beyond Settler Carcerality: Abolition and Reparatory Justice' (CNERJ, 2025). She is also working on projects relating to self-defence as a liberatory practice and the possibilities for reparatory justice in the Caribbean and Nova Scotia.

Other recent publications include ‘Homelands of Mary Ann Shadd’, where she explores the Black radical tradition, historical erasure, portraiture, and the politics of recognition in international law’s narratives about women (in Immi Tallgren, ed., Portraits of Women International Law New Names and Forgotten Faces?); and ‘Thoughts of Liberation’ with Nataleah Hunter-Young (Canadian Art), which puts ten Black women poets, scholars, artists, and activists in conversation.

Dr. Riley Case collaborates with people working toward racial and ecological justice in the UN system, academic communities, grassroots organizations, and legal clinics. She has received awards and support for her research from the Open Society Foundations, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Fonds de Recherche du Québec, SSHRC, Canadian Association of Law Teachers, and the American Society of International Law, among others.

Her artistic practice, specifically her photography, is featured in her publications and those of others.

Areas of Interest

Colonialisms, legal history, international and domestic law formations, Black Studies, Critical Race Theory, queer theory, Third World Approaches to International Law, Indigenous law, Indigenous critique, radicalism and law reform, the natural world, arts.

Education

• SJD, University of Toronto
• LLM, McGill University Faculty of Law
• Member of the Ontario Bar
• JD, Osgoode Hall Law School
• BA, McGill University and Université Paris-Sorbonne

Publications

• The Colour of Jus Cogens (with Frédéric Mégret) in Mohsen al Attar, Ata Hindi and Claire Smith, eds, Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialized Boundaries (OUP, 2026)
• Race, Ecology, Nature and International Law: A Dialogue with Sarah Riley Case (with Usha Natarajan) TWAILR: Dialogues #19/2025
• Beyond Settler Carcerality: Abolition and Reparatory Justice (2025) Canadian Network for Equity and Racial Justice (CNERJ)
• The Inhuman as Refusal (with Marie Petersmann and Juliana M. Streva) (2024) Critical Legal Thinking
• To Protest for Black Life during the Pandemic: Resistance and Freedom in a Settler State (2024) 38:3 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 316 (awarded the CALT Scholarly Paper Prize)
• Looking to the Horizon: The Meanings of Reparations for Unbearable Crises (2023) 117 AJIL Unbound 49 (relied on to frame a special issue on reparations in AJIL 2025)
• Homelands of Mary Ann Shadd in Immi Tallgren, ed, Portraits of Women International Law New Names and Forgotten Faces? (OUP, 2023) (book awarded the Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship from the American Society of International Law)
• Redressing Historical Responsibility for the Unjust Precarities of Climate Change in the Present (with Julia Dehm) in Benoit Mayer and Alexander Zahar, eds, Debating Climate Law (CUP, 2021)
• Thoughts of Liberation (with Nataleah Hunter-Young) Canadian Art (June 17, 2020)