Sarah Riley Case

SSRN: ssrn.com/author=3497555
Twitter: @SarahRileyCase
Website: https://www.blacklegalpoethics.com

Biography

Dr. Sarah Riley Case is an Assistant Professor whose research and teaching focus on slavery and the law, Critical Race Theory, Black life, Third World Approaches to International Law, (TWAIL), colonialisms, arts, and governing the natural world. She is the convener 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  ‘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 ‘The Colour of Jus Cogens’ with Frédéric Mégret (forthcoming in Mohsen al Attar, Ata Hindi and Claire Smith, eds., Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialized Boundaries), which addresses how subaltern appeals to jus cogens norms, such as slavery, genocide and apartheid, are sidelined due to racial stratifications.

Other recent publications include ‘The Inhuman as Refusal’ (Critical Legal Thinking), a textual and photographic conversation about dehumanization, the natural world, and praxes of being human in light of racial capitalism with Marie Petersmann and Juliana M. Streva; ‘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.  

She was awarded the Canadian Association of Law Teachers scholarly paper award for her article, To Protest for Black Life during the Pandemic: Resistance and Freedom in a Settler State’ (Canadian Journal of Law and Society), where she considers qualities of protest, including Black presence, practicing care, and calling for abolition, inspired by Black feminism.

Sarah Riley Case collaborates with people working toward racial and ecological justice in the UN system, academic communities, and legal clinics. She has received awards and honours from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, SSHRC, Transnational Environmental Law journal, Canadian Association of Law Teachers, and the American Society of International Law, among others.

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

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

Past Employment

• Boulton Fellow, McGill University, Faculty of Law
• Task Force on Legal Aid Ontario Modernization, Black Legal Action Centre
• Executive, Black Canadian Studies Association 
• Adjunct Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
• Adjunct Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School
• Fulbright Visiting Researcher, Harvard Law School
• Special Advisor, UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity
• Visiting Academic, Melbourne Law School
• Counsel, Law Commission of Ontario
• Project Officer and Legal Specialist, International Development Law Organization
• Equity Advisory Group, Law Society of Ontario
• Board of Governors, Canadian Association of Black Lawyers
• Associate Lawyer, Koskie Minsky LLP
• Judicial Law Clerk, Ontario Superior Court of Justice

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 legal orders, radicalism and law reform, the natural world, arts.

Publications

• The Inhuman as Refusal (with Marie Petersmann and Juliana M. Streva) (2024) Critical Legal Thinking
• 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, forthcoming)
• 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
• 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)