Methodology and the International Legal Profession: A personal and professional account
The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism invites you to the following talk With Gleider Hernández
Thursday, Jan 27
10:30-11:30 am EST
On Zoom. All are welcome
About the talk
In this presentation, I propose to give both some practical advice to early career researchers contemplating a career in international law, but also interspersed with some wider observations of international law scholarship as a discipline inextricably intertwined with the profession. I intend to share some thoughts about my own career in academia, civil service, activism and practice and how these have interacted (but also perhaps influenced) my academic methodology and scholarship. Moreover, as the author of a textbook used for international law teaching, I intend to explore the enduring tension between a formalist-positivist stance and the critical challenges that have emerged in scholarship in the last decades. I will conclude with a few thoughts and reflections on publication strategy at the earliest stages: on the notion of audience; on thinking about your own situation as a legal professional; and developing an autonomous ‘voice’.
About the speaker, Gleider Hernández
Gleider Hernández, a graduate of the Faculty (LL.B. & BCL, 2001) is Professor of Public International Law at the Catholic University of Leuven and the Open University of the Netherlands. Previously, he was Reader in Public International Law and a founding Deputy Director of the Global Policy Institute at Durham University. Gleider took a D.Phil from Wadham College, Oxford, and read for an LL.M at Leiden and BCL and LL.B degrees at McGill. He is the author of The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function (OUP, 2014) and International Law (OUP, 2019; 2nd edition 2022). Gleider has held visiting professorships and research fellowships at the Hague Academy of International Law; Harvard Law School (as a Fulbright Scholar); Durham Institute of Advanced Study; Université Paris Nanterre; the University of Amsterdam; McGill University, and the TMC Asser Institute. Prior to his academic career, Gleider served as Associate Legal Officer at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, clerking for former President Peter Tomka and Judge Bruno Simma. and was called to the Barreau du Québec.
For more information: human.rights [at] mcgill.ca
We hope you can attend!