Joanna Langille (SJD 2019)

The Limits of Legality: The Rule of Law Principles Governing the Common Law Public Policy Exception in Private International Law (Thesis)

Graduate supervisors: Karen Knop, Arthur Ripstein.

Awards: Trudeau Scholarship, Trudeau Foundation (2014); Furman Fellowship, NYU School of Law (2014); John Peter Humphrey Fellowship, Canadian Council on International Law (2014); SSRHC Michael Smith Travelling Supplement, SSHRC (2014); SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship, SSHRC (2012); SJD Entrance Scholarship, University of Toronto Faculty of Law (2012); Institute for International Law and Justice Fellow at NYU School of Law (2014); Visiting Researcher, Yale Law School (2013).

While she enjoyed interning at the World Trade Organization, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, and WilmerHale LLP’s appellate litigation group, Joanna Langille, a U of T SJD graduate, always intended to be a scholar. “The biggest gift we have as scholars is getting to choose how we spend our intellectual energy,” says Langille, now an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law and the co-director of Western’s Legal Philosophy Research Group. “We get to decide which puzzles we unravel. It’s an amazing career.”
For Langille, working with students is also a draw.

“It brings me so much joy to be in the classroom – discussing the law’s normative framework, unpacking legal concepts, and helping students determine the course of their professional careers,” she said.

There is another factor at play, too. Langille loves being part of an institution and, at Western, she has had the opportunity to help build the Faculty of Law.

“It’s such a pleasure to teach at Western at a time when the Faculty of Law is growing. We have a fantastic group of junior scholars here, and we get to help decide what we want the institution to look like and how to make it the best law school it can.”

Langille’s current research focuses on private international law and international trade law. Most recently, she and a colleague from NYU School of Law published a piece in the American Journal of International Law examining the future of the WTO, which “is under threat from forces seeking to stymie its dispute settlement processes.”

She credits the U of T Faculty of Law for ensuring her success as a legal scholar.

“My time at UofT Law was central to helping me mature as a scholar,” Langille said. “My doctoral committee provided extremely comprehensive and engaging feedback and took me very seriously as a scholar. They treated me like a colleague, not a student.

“UofT Law is also an extraordinarily engaging intellectual community,” she said. “All of my doctoral colleagues were amazingly accomplished. They were a lively, supportive, fun group of people. Thankfully, some of them are now my faculty colleagues at Western Law, so I have been able to continue to be a part of the wonderful intellectual community I developed at U of T Law.”