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Michael Lynk

Michael Lynk is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Law, Western University, in London, Ontario. He joined the Faculty in 1999, and taught courses in labour, human rights, disability, constitutional and administrative law. He served as Associate Dean of the Faculty between 2008-11. Professor Lynk retired in 2022.

Professor Lynk has also taught labour law courses at the University of Ottawa, Carleton University and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He is a native of Halifax, and a graduate of Dalhousie University (LL.B.) and Queens’ University (LL.M.). Before becoming an academic, he practiced labour law in Ottawa and Toronto for a decade. Professor Lynk has served as a labour arbitrator with the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board. He has written widely on the issues of labour law and human rights in the unionized Canadian workplace, and has spoken regularly at industrial relations and labour law conferences across the country.
 
Professor Lynk is the co-author, with Michael Mac Neil and Peter Engelmann, of Trade Union Law in Canada (Canada Law Book). He is  the co-editor, with John Craig, of Globalization and the Future of Labour Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and the co-editor, with Susan Akram, Michael Dumper and Iain Scobbie, of International Law and the Middle East Conflict (Routledge, 2011).  He is part of the academic team that produced the Labour Law Casebook (9th ed.), which is the national casebook used in law schools across the country. As well, he served as the revising author of the human rights chapter in Employment Law in Canada (4th ed.) (LexisNexis), whose lead revising author is Peter Barnacle.  Prof. Lynk was also an editor of the Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal from 2000 to 2008. His academic work has appeared widely in law review journals and edited book collections.

In March 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Professor Lynk as the 7th Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967. During his six year mandate as Special Rapporteur, he regularly addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and the 3^rd Committee of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. His UN reports have been widely cited, he has frequently spoken to UN, academic and institutional conferences in North America, Europe and the Middle East and he has regularly published academic and opinion pieces on the role of international law respecting the unlawful Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory.  Professor Lynk has written about his UN experiences in a 2022 book co-authored with Richard Falk and John Dugard, two of his predecessors as UN special rapporteurs: Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations (Clarity Press).

Professor Lynk’s academic scholarship and his United Nations reports have been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the United Nations General Assembly.

In January 2015, Professor Lynk was named to the Mayor of London’s Honours List for his work on humanitarian issues. In 2025, he was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal for his work on international human rights.