I am an Associate Professor in law at Maynooth University, with primary research interests in international economic law (mostly WTO), legal and political theory, and the intersection of the two.

Academic Profile

My research interests are primarily in international law, including in particular international trade law, and legal and political theory. My work addresses fundamental political and moral questions in international economic governance, including how we should understand the demands of justice and equality in the international economy, what grounds the legitimate authority of international laws and courts, and what role moral concerns should play in the interpretation of international treaties. My 2018 book, Distributive Justice and World Trade Law: A Political Theory of International Economic Law (Cambridge), was awarded the prestigious Peter Birks Prize for Oustanding Legal Scholarship by the Society of Legal Scholars. Other work has been published in leading international journals, including the European Journal of International Law, the Modern Law Review, the Journal of Political Philosophy and Politics Philosophy & Economics. (See my publications here)

I joined Maynooth University in 2019. I previously worked as a Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast (2017-19) and the University of Sheffield (2014-17) and as a Teaching Fellow at University College London (2012-14), where I completed my PhD on distributive justice in world trade law.

Before moving into full time academic work I practised as a solicitor with a leading Irish law firm, specialising in commercial dispute resolution, technology, data privacy and corporate crime.

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching, like my research, aims to be interdisciplinary and problem focussed. Law tries to make sense of our shared lives. Legal knowledge is therefore also social knowledge, and must be informed by those other disciplines, including economics, political science, and philosophy, that make society their object. As social knowledge it is also contingent, evolving and uncertain. By teaching law as questions as much as answers, I try to engage students as participants in the construction of legal knowledge. There is nothing I teach that is not both challenging and important. My first goal is always to convey to students why the questions we study matter, motivating them to pursue their own answers to those questions.

I also tweet intermittently, here: @oisinsuttle