Queen's University Law Faculty, Belfast, Northern Ireland, LL.B., Ph.D.
Columbia Law School, LL.M.
Professor Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin is concurrently the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a professor of law at the University of Ulster's Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is co-founder and associate director of the Institute.
Professor Ní Aoláin received her LL.B. and Ph.D. in law at the Queen's University Law Faculty in Belfast and also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School. She was a visiting professor at the Law School in 2003-04 and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School (1993-94); an associate-in-law at Columbia Law School (1994-96); a visiting professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University (1996-2000); an associate professor of law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel (1997-99); and a visiting fellow at Princeton University (2001-02).
She is the recipient of numerous academic awards and honors, including a Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann scholarship, a European Commission award, and the Lawlor fellowship.
Her teaching and research interests are in the fields of international law, human rights law, national security law, transitional justice, and feminist legal theory. Her first book, The Politics of Force (Blackstaff Press, 2000), examined the use of force by state agents during the conflict in Northern Ireland and contained a unique empirically based analysis of all conflict-related deaths in the jurisdiction by state agents. The theoretical and policy focus of the research was located in an examination of the relationship between international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
Professor Ni Aoláin’s work has continued to focus on the intersection of human rights and humanitarian norms. Her 2006 book, Law in Times of Crisis (Cambridge University Press), was awarded the Certificate of Merit for creative scholarship in 2007, the American Society of International Law's preeminent prize. Her forthcoming book, On the Frontlines: Gender, War and the Post-Conflict Process (Oxford University Press, 2011), explores the experiences of women in post-conflict societies across multiple case studies. Another forthcoming book, Exceptional Courts and Military Commissions in Comparative and Policy Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2011), coauthored with Law School Professor Oren Gross, examines the use of exceptional courts across numerous jurisdictions, with particular emphasis on post-9/11 developments. She has published widely in the fields of emergency powers, conflict regulation, transitional justice, and sex-based violence in times of war and continues to write extensively on theoretical aspects of transition.
Professor Ní Aoláin was a representative of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia (1996-97). In 2003, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making. In 2008, she was invited to participate in a seminar of experts organized by the Working Group "Protecting Human Rights While Countering Terrorism" of the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force.
She has been nominated twice (2004 and 2007) by the Irish government to the European Court of Human Rights, the first woman and the first academic lawyer to be thus nominated. She was appointed by the Irish Minister of Justice to the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2000 and served until 2005. She remains an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, and is also a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. In 2010 she was elected to a three-year term on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.
The Paradox of Democratic Transition (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2013) (with Colm Campbell)
On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process (Oxford University Press, 2011) (with Dina Francesca Haynes & Naomi Cahn)
International Human Rights: Law, Policy, and Process (LexisNexis, 4th ed., 2009) (with David Weissbrodt & others)
Selected International Human Rights Instruments and Bibliography for Research on International Human Rights (LexisNexis, 4th ed., 2009) (with David Weissbrodt, Mary Rumsey & others)
Law in Times of Crisis: Emergency Powers in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2006) (recipient of the American Society of International Law's 2007 Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship) (with Oren Gross)
Transitional Emergency Jurisprudence: Derogation and Transition, in Transitional Jurisprudence and the European Convention on Human Rights 24-51 (Antoine Buyse & Michael Hamilton, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Learning the Lessons: What Feminist Legal Theory Teaches International Human Rights Law and Practice, in Transcending the Boundaries of Law: Generations of Feminism and Legal Theory 281-289 (Martha Albertson Fineman, ed., Routledge, 2010)
Rights after Revolution: Progress or Backslide after the Good Friday Agreement?, in Human Rights & Conflict Resolution in Context: Colombia, Sierra Leone, & Northern Ireland (Eileen F. Babbitt & Ellen L. Lutz, eds., Syracuse University Press, 2009) (with Maggie Beirne)
Enforcing Social and Economic Rights at the Domestic Level: A Proposal, in Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism 221-239 (Margot Young, Susan Boyd, Gwen Brodsky & Shelagh Day, eds., UBC Press, 2007) (with Grainne McKeever)
The Battle for Transitional Justice: Hegemony, Iraq and International Law in Judges, Transition, and Human Rights (John Morison, Kieran McEvoy & Gordon Anthony, eds., Oxford University Press, 2007) (with Christine Bell & Colm Campbell)
The Individual Right of Access to Justice in Times of Crisis: Emergencies, Armed Conflict, and Terrorism, in Access to Justice as a Human Right 57-93 (Francesco Franconi, ed., Oxford University Press, 2007)
The European Convention on Human Rights and its Prohibition on Torture, in Torture: A Collection 213-228 (Sanford Levinson, ed., Oxford University Press, 2004)
To Know Where We Are Going, We Need to Know Where We Are: Revisiting States of Emergency, in A Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century 79 (Angela Hegarty & Siobhan Leonard, eds., Cavendish Publishing Limited, 1999) (with Oren Gross)
Journal Articles
Gendering Constitutional Design in Post-Conflict Societies, 17 William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 509 (2011) (with Dina Francesca Haynes & Naomi Cahn)
Foreword, Transitional Justice: (Re)Conceptualising the Field, 3 International Journal of Law in Context 81-88 (2007) (with Christine Bell & Colm Campbell)
Gender, Truth & Transition, 16 UCLA Women's Law Journal 229-279 (2007) (with Catherine Turner)
Underenforcement and Intersectionality: Gendered Aspects of Transition for Women, 1 International Journal of Transitional Justice 338-354 (2007) (with Eilish Rooney)
Political Violence and Gender in Times of Transition, 15 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 829-849 (2006)
Justice Discourses in Transition, 13 Social & Legal Studies 305-328 (2004) (with Christine Bell & Colm Campbell)
Looking Ahead: Strategic Priorities and Challenges for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 35 Columbia Human Rights Law Review 469 (2004), reprinted in International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (Henry J. Steiner, Philip Alston & Ryan Goodman, eds., Oxford University Press, 3d ed., 2007)
Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Enforcing Socio-Economic Rights in Northern Ireland, [2004] 2 European Human Rights Law Review 158-180 (2004) (with Grainne McKeever)
Balancing Human Rights: International Legal Responses to Terrorism in the Wake of September 11, 33 Israel Yearbook on Human Rights 63 (2003)
Local Meets Global: Transitional Justice in Northern Ireland, 26 Fordham International Law Journal 871 (2003) (with Colm Campbell)
From Discretion to Scrutiny: Revisiting the Application of the Margin of Appreciation Doctrine in the Context of Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights, 23 Human Rights Quarterly 625 (2001) (with Oren Gross)
The Relationship between Situations of Emergency and Low-Intensity Armed Conflict, 28 Israel Yearbook on Human Rights 97 (1999)
The Fractured Soul of the Dayton Peace Agreement: A Legal Analysis, 19 Michigan Journal of International Law 957 (1998), reprinted in Reconstructing Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Florian Bieber & Dzemal Sokolovic, eds., Ashgate Publishing, 2001)
Buying Social Justice, American Journal of International Law (forthcoming)
Expanding the Boundaries of Transitional Justice, 22 Ethics & International Affairs 213 (2008) (reviewing Justice as Prevention: Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies (Alexander Mayer-Rieckh and Pablo de Greiff, eds., Social Science Research Council, 2007) and What Happened to the Women? Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations (Ruth Rubio-Marin, ed., Social Science Research Council, 2006))
Terror Conflated?, 25 Constitutional Commentary 131 (2008) (reviewing Eric A. Posner & Adrian Vermeule, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts (Oxford University Press, 2007))
The Power of Voice Narrative at the End of Conflict, 28 Journal of Law and Society 311 (2000) (reviewing Bill Rolston, Unfinished Business: State Killings and the Quest for Truth (Beyond the Pale Publications, 2000))
Book Review, 8 European Journal of International Law 539 (1997) (reviewing Michael O'Flaherty & Liz Heffernan, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: International Human Rights Law in Ireland (Brehon Publishing, 1995))
Book Review, 6 European Journal of International Law 156 (1995) (reviewing Henry Murdoch, A Dictionary of Irish Law (Topaz Publications, rev. 2d ed., 1993))
The Entrenchment of Systematic Abuse - Mass Rape in the Former Yugoslavia, 8 Harvard Human Rights Journal 285 (1995) (reviewing Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Former Yugoslavia (Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., University of Nebraska Press, 1994))
