(Photo by Veikko Somerpuro courtesy of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies)
The University of Toronto Faculty of Law is recognizing the extraordinary scholarship of Karen Knop (1960-2022), a professor of international law who held the Faculty’s Cecil A. Wright Chair.
The Sept. 9 conference at the Jackman Law Building – Private Citizen of the World – brings together leading public and private international law scholars from around the globe to deliver papers on 'Knopian' themes.
“Karen Knop is internationally recognized as a cutting-edge scholar of public international law. She was a brilliant, eloquent writer, an original thinker, and a generous colleague and teacher, always ready to share her insight and provide support,” says Dean and University Professor Jutta Brunnée, James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair.
“The conference – bringing together colleagues from far and wide – attests to the fact that Karen was not only respected the world over, but a friend to so many of us, and beloved by her students, to whom she was a dedicated mentor.”
Knop was a doctoral graduate of U of T, receiving her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD). She spent a year as a Canada/USSR Academic Exchange Junior Scholar at Moscow State University, a time well before other scholars began exploring ‘Russian perspectives’ on international law. Knop was appointed a full-time faculty member at U of T Law in 1993.
Her monograph Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 and was recognized by the American Society of International Law with its prestigious Certificate of Merit in 2003.
As a leading voice in her field, Knop was appointed the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2020.
“Karen had a huge impact for critical thinking in international law – from its private to its public side, from human rights to statehood and beyond. She had not committed herself to any of the available specializations. Instead, she examined the law from a broadly cultural and historical perspective, embedded her powerful feminist approach,” says Martti Koskenniemi, a professor emeritus of international Law at the University of Helsinki.
"It was the broadness of her vision, and the power of her feminism that made her such an excellent candidate for the HCA fellowship. These qualities also made her an exceptionally valuable colleague and a conversation partner. One learned so much from her – and had such fun in her company.”
In 2022, Knop was named one of the inaugural Max Planck Law Fellows – the highest honour that the Max Planck Law network can confer on scholars working outside Germany’s Max Planck Society.
“Karen came to private international law from public international law, which is one reason why her approach was unusual and exciting,” says Ralf Michaels of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, who soon after meeting Knop, co-authored with her and Annelise Riles, the legal anthropologist, a path-breaking article for the Stanford Law Review.
“She was chosen for the fellowship because she was not only the leading scholar between private and public international law, but because her research is so generative. We were able to organize a summer school where she dazzled participants from all over the world.”
Knop was also invited to give a set of lectures at the Hague Academy of International Law in 2020, perhaps the main mark of recognition by the community of international lawyers. She would have given the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures in 2025, were it not for her untimely death. The lecture that commemorates the leading international lawyer of the last century. The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge posted this notice on its website:
"We are immeasurably saddened by the news of the passing of our colleague and friend Karen Knop. Karen’s long association with Cambridge and the Lauterpacht Centre began with her doctoral work under the supervision of James Crawford. In May this year, Karen joined us in Cambridge for the memorial conference that marked one year of James’s own untimely passing. On that occasion as on so many others, she floored us with her questing intelligence, warmth, vibrance and camaraderie. We shared both laughter and tears and looked forward to meeting again.
Karen was to deliver the 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures. We will find an appropriate way to dedicate those lectures to her memory. The passage of time will allow us to meet in the spirit of scholarly engagement and celebration of her work, but it will not lessen the loss that we are feeling today, together with her colleagues, students, and other friends all around the world. Our deepest condolences to her partner Ralph, and to all who loved her.
Dear Karen, you were the best of us. We will always miss you."
The Sept. 9 conference is generously sponsored by the University of Toronto Press. The 11 papers to be presented will be published in a special issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal (UTLJ). Founded in 1935, the UTLJ is the oldest university law journal in Canada. Knop is remembered as one of the journal’s transformational editors. She held the post from 2007-2012.
“This volume of UTLJ will be particularly special,” says David Dyzenhaus, University Professor of law and philosophy, Albert Abel Chair at the Faculty of Law, and Knop’s successor as editor of the UTLJ.
“As is evident from the accolades quoted above, once the idea had been conceived, invitations to the scholars who will be participating met with immediate and warm acceptance. The papers will attempt to do justice to the exceptionally wide range of Karen’s scholarly inquiries,” he says. “Most gratifying to me is that among the papers is one by Annelise Riles, her close friend and regular co-author, who will be presenting a paper that she and Karen wrote together and which Annelise will finish.”
“Karen loved the kind of collective inquiry that can happen at a conference such as this one, and it may be the best way our Faculty together with some of her friends and fellow inquirers from around the world including two of her former students, can honour her while mourning her loss,” adds Dyzenhaus.
Among those presenting is U of T Law doctoral graduate, Roxana Banu (SJD 2016), an Associate Professor at Oxford University Faculty of Law and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall.
"I owe so much of what I have achieved professionally to Karen Knop,” says Banu. “She transformed the way I think about the law and about my role as an academic. It is impossible to describe what she meant to me."
