Dr Alain Zysset
- Lecturer in Public Law (School of Law)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8377-4973Biography
I joined the School of Law in January 2019 as Lecturer in Public Law. Before coming to Glasgow, I was an Assistant Professor in Public Law and Human Rights at Durham University (Durham Law School, 2017-2018).
Prior to these permanent positions, I held postdoctoral positions at the University of Oslo (PluriCourts Center of Excellence, 2016-17), at the European University Institute in Florence (Max Weber Fellowship, 2015-16) and at Goethe University Frankfurt (Excellence Cluster ‘Normative Orders’, 2014-15), on a fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
My doctoral thesis, also funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, examined the practice of the European Court of Human Rights from the perspective of human rights theory. The thesis was defended summa cum laude at the Faculty of Law of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2013 and resulted in a monograph, The ECHR and Human Rights Theory (Routledge, 2016). My thesis was supervised by Prof. Samantha Besson.
My academic background is multidisciplinary. After a BA in Philosophy and History (University of Lausanne, 2007), I have earned graduate degrees in Philosophy (M.Sc. in Philosophy and Public Policy, London School of Economics, 2008), History (M.A. in International History, Graduate Institute Geneva, 2010) and Law (LL.M., University of Toronto, 2014).
I have held visiting positions at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Arizona (visiting scholar, January – April 2012) and at Osgoode Hall Law School (visiting professor, January – April 2015). In September 2019, I will be guest lecturer at the 1st Summer School on the ECHR at the University of Leipzig.
In 2019-20, I will be a Visiting Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin for a 6-month project on the European Court of Human Rights and populism. The project is funded by a Re-Constitution Fellowship.
Research interests
My main area of research is the theory and practice of the ECHR. The scientific ambition here is to reconstruct the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the machinery of the system (subsidiarity, margin of appreciation, proportionality) from a normative perspective, in particular human rights theory and democratic theory. In addition to my monograph (The ECHR and Human Rights Theory, Routledge, 2016, I have published outputs of this project in International Journal of Constitutional Law (2019) and Global Constitutionalism (2016).
My second area of research is the theory and practice of international criminal law with particular emphasis on crimes against humanity. The scientific ambition here is to reconstruct the case law and the machinery of international criminal tribunals (in particular, the International Criminal Court) from the perspective of normative criminal law theory. I have published the outputs of this project in in Criminal Law and Philosophy (2018) and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (2016).
My on-going project is to build a normative theory that could unify human rights law and international criminal law. Here again, the project is to ‘take practice seriously’ in building a normative theory of international law. The first step of this project is to examine the similar distribution of jurisdiction between human rights systems and international criminal law systems and their normative significance. The outputs of this project have so far been published in Ratio Juris (forthcoming 2019).
Grants
- 16,000 Re-Constitution Fellowship (2019-20)
- 40,000 Postdoctoral Fellowship – PluriCourts, University of Oslo (2015-18)
- 25,000 Max Weber Fellowship – European University Institute (2015-16)
- 50,000 Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship – Swiss National Research Foundation (2014-15)
- 10,000 University of Toronto Graduate Fellowship (LLM, 2013-14)
- 23,000 UCLA School of Law – Dean’s Scholarship (LLM, declined, 2013)
- 115,000 ProDoc Research Module – Swiss National Research Foundation (PhD, 2010-13)
- 7,500 Swiss Study Foundation / Schweizerische Studienstiftung Scholarship (Master LSE, 2007-8)
- 4,000 Rotary Club Switzerland Scholarship (Master LSE, 2007-8)
Supervision
I am very interested in supervising doctoral projects at the intersection of human rights law and normative theory (including constitutional theory) as well as international law and normative theory more broadly construed.
Hatice Sare Temel - 'Refugee Rights in the Rawlsian Theory of Justice'
- McGowan, Jamie
Ratio Juris and Juristocracy
Teaching
- Constitutional Law 1
Additional information
- Gottlob Prize for the best doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Law, University of Fribourg – winner (2017)
- ASPDS Prize for best doctoral thesis in legal theory in Switzerland – runner-up (2015)
