• Home
• About Us
• Faculty
• Joanna Langille

Joanna Langille

Joanna Langille is an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law and the Co-Director of Western’s Legal Philosophy Research Group. Joanna’s research and teaching focuses on private international law, international trade law, private law, and legal theory. Her scholarship has been published in leading journals and collections, including the University of Toronto Law Journal, the American Journal of International Law, the NYU Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Law, and Oxford University Press’ Philosophical Foundations series.

Joanna is the 2023 winner of Western University’s Marilyn Robinson Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her scholarship has been recognized with awards and grants from the Canadian Foundation for Legal Research; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); the Canadian Council on International Law; the US Customs and International Trade Bar Association; the Europaeum; NYU Law; the University of Oxford; the University of Toronto; and Western University. Joanna has co-organized the two leading conferences in private law theory: The North American Workshop on Private Law Theory (NAWPLT) and the Obligations Conference (Obligations X: Private Law and the State). She is the Vice-Chair of the International Economic Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law (ASIL).

Joanna completed her doctorate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law as a Trudeau Scholar and a SSHRC Bombardier Scholar. She received her JD from NYU Law (magna cum laude), where she studied as a Furman Scholar and an Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar. As a Commonwealth Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, she obtained an MPhil in International Relations. Her honours undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Political Science (High Distinction) is from the University of Toronto, where she was a Canadian Millennium Scholar, a Canadian Merit Award winner, and a winner of the University of Toronto Alumni Association Award of Excellence.

Prior to her appointment at Western, Joanna was a Furman Fellow and an Institute for International Law and Justice Fellow at NYU Law. She has been a Visiting Researcher at Yale Law School, the University of Groningen’s Philosophy Department, and the University of Toronto’s Munk School for Global Affairs. She has consulted for parties and authored amicus briefs in various trade disputes, and has worked with the World Trade Organization and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development. Joanna clerked at the Ontario Court of Appeal, and is called to the bar in New York and Ontario.