Application

Patrick Macklem

Full Professor
University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
Ethnic, Cultural, National, and Indigenous Populations Within and Across National Borders: The Role of Inernational Human Rights Law
Canada

Patrick Macklem is a Professor of Law at University of Toronto, where he teaches international human rights law, aboriginal peoples and the law, constitutional law, and labour law and policy. He is also a Visiting Professor of Law at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, where he teaches international human rights law and comparative federalism.

Professor Macklem works extensively on the domestic and international rights of indigenous peoples and cultural and national minorities. He served as constitutional advisor to Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and has provided legal and policy advice to numerous First Nations. He has published extensively in the areas of constitutional law and international human rights law. His recent book, Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada (2001), was awarded the Canadian Political Science Association 2002 Donald Smiley Prize for best book on Canadian government, and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2002 Harold Innis Prize by for the best English-language book in the social sciences.

Professor Macklem received his B.A. in political science and philosophy from McGill University, his LL.B. from University of Toronto, and his LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

Selected Publications:

"Labour Law Beyond Borders," 5 Journal of International Economic Law 605 (2002)
"The Maori Experiment," 52 University of Toronto Law Journal 1 (2002)
Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001.
The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-terrorism Bill. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001. (Co-editor, contributor.)
"Indigenous Rights and Multinational Corporations at International Law," 24 Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 475, 2001.
"Indigenous Rights in the Inter-American System." 22 Human Rights Quarterly 569, 2000. (Co-authored.)

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The overall objective of my research project is to determine how international human rights law comprehends and addresses sectarian, ethnic and cultural conflict within and across national borders. It will test three hypotheses. First, international legal developments relating to indigenous peoples enrich our understanding of the conceptual and normative underpinnings of ethnic, cultural and national minority rights. Second, the emergent international legal status of indigenous peoples and of ethnic, cultural and national minorities, viewed together, explain the emergence of a more pragmatic conception of the right of self-determination. Third, these developments suggest that international human rights law is moving beyond its traditional concern with the just exercise of sovereignty to attend to a just distribution of sovereignty - a distribution premised on international recognition of rights of ethnic, cultural, national, and indigenous populations within and across national borders.

The research will be based on qualitative analysis and comparison of different forms and justifications of protecting indigenous and ethnic, cultural and national minority interests in international human rights law. I will focus primarily on the work of the UN Human Rights Committee; the UN Human Rights Commission Working Group on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the European Court of Human Rights; and the Office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

I hope my research will contribute to developing new approaches to the NCS's theme of addressing sectarian, ethnic and cultural conflict within and across national borders. It focuses on the role of law - specifically, international human rights law - in constituting and recognizing ethnic, cultural, national and indigenous populations as legal actors, and is therefore intimately connected to challenges associated with assessing the normative and legal legitimacy of claims by such populations for self-determination and greater autonomy. It also proposes to focus on international legal institutions whose work is geared intensely toward producing solutions, mediated through legal forms and discourse, to vexing problems associated with sectarian, ethnic and cultural conflict.

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