Bio

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Law and Governance at Tilburg Law School. I received my PhD (cum laude) from Tilburg Law School in September 2021 for my doctoral thesis entitled: 'A Kaleidoscope of Meaning Fragments: Understanding the Rule of Law's Paradoxes in International Development'

Prior to that I completed an M.St. in Socio-Legal Research at Oxford University, an LL.M. in Comparative Law at McGill Law School, a B.A. in Common Law at the University of Ottawa, an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto, and a B.A. in History & Political Science, also at the University of Toronto. 

Expertise

 I am a Canadian lawyer and member of the Bar of Ontario. Between 2010 and 2012, I worked as a civil litigator in Toronto before returning to academia in 2012. Prior to that, between 2008 and 2010, I worked in Afghanistan on international development projects and as a legal consultant. It was upon this experiential base that I later developed my doctoral thesis a decade later. Since 2020 I have been a member of the 'Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene' Sector Plan research project at Tilburg University and have been transitioning my research in this direction ever since. I also conduct research for the NWO-funded 'Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Agriculture: the Role of Emissions Trading' project. My research interests are broad, but often focus around the Anthropocene and climate change law, law and development, systems, interdisciplinarity, and qualitative empirical methods.

Teaching

I currently teach in the first year of the Global Law bachelor's program. I co-teach Introduction to Global Law I in the first semester, and I am the course coordinator for Introduction to Global Law II in the second semester. I also teach in the Research Design and Methods for Postnational Lawyers (RePL) course and supervise masters theses for the LLM program in International Law and Global Governance. I also occasionally supervise bachelor theses for Tilburg University's Liberal Arts & Science Program.

As of December 2022, I was appointed the Head of Teaching for the Department of Public Law and Governance.

Courses

Recent publications

  1. Constitutionalising in the Anthropocene

    Fleurke, F., Somsen, H., Lindahl, H., Petersmann, M.-C., Leach, M., & Paiement, P. (2024). Constitutionalising in the Anthropocene. Journal of human rights and the environment, 15(1), 4-22.
  2. Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene: An introduction

    Paiement, P., Fleurke, F., Lindahl, H., Somsen, H., Leach, M., & Petersmann, M.-C. (2024). Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene: An introduction. Journal of human rights and the environment, 15(1), 1-3.
  3. Seeking ‘systems’ in Earth System Law - Boundaries, identity, and pur…

    Leach, M. (Accepted/In press). Seeking ‘systems’ in Earth System Law: Boundaries, identity, and purpose in an emergent field. Earth System Governance.
  4. Climate change mitigation law and policy in the United States and Can…

    Leach, M., & Kuh, K. (Accepted/In press). Climate change mitigation law and policy in the United States and Canada. In J. Verschuuren, & L. Reins (Eds.), Research handbook on climate change mitigation law (2nd ed.). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd..
  5. Critical (legal) realism

    Leach, M. (2022). Critical (legal) realism. Paper presented at IACR 2022 Annual Critical Realism Conference, The Hague, Netherlands.

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