Kristen Boon

Twitter@ProfKristenBoon

Kristen Boon is the inaugural Susan & Perry Dellelce Dean of Common Law.

Dean Boon’s vision for the Faculty of Law - Common Law Section is to build community through inclusive collaboration. Her leadership focusses on fostering a just and equitable environment that invites full representation and participation. As Dean, she is committed to ensuring students have a truthful understanding of the Indigenous experience in Canada, and the role of law as both a restraining and an empowering force.

Dean Boon’s work encompasses public and private law, with particular interest in international responsibility, access to justice, and immunities. She is an expert in international law and contracts and has published articles on investor / state arbitration, sanctions, state responsibility, and international organizations. She is also a frequent lecturer and has presented on more than 50 panels and engagements internationally. Her current research is focussed on issues relating to state owned entities, access to justice in international law, and the law of immunities. She has also been awarded visiting fellowships from the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Law, the European University Institute, and the University of Oslo Faculty of Law. Dean Boon is a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law and a current member of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration’s Academic Council.

Dean Boon has long been concerned with questions of Indigenous rights, and wrote her Master’s thesis at McGill University on Indigenous Self Governance in Canada. 

Dean Boon was a law professor at a US university for 15 years before joining uOttawa.  She is a former Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development where she chaired multiple committees and held many service-oriented roles, involving oversight of aspects of experiential learning, clinical education, faculty development, and university relations.

Dean Boon began her legal career as a Litigation Associate at the New York firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. She is a former Canadian Supreme Court Clerk, and she recently served as a visiting academic in the legal bureau of Global Affairs Canada.

Dean Boon is a member of the Law Society of Ontario and the New York Bar.

She is delighted to have returned to Canada with her family, and to be raising her three children in Ottawa.

• Kristen Boon, Attribution in International Law, in M.J. Durkee (ed.) States, Firms and their Legal Fictions: Attributing Identity and Responsibility to Artificial Entities, CUP (2023).
• Balancing Rights and Duties of Hosts and Guests under International Law: The Case Study of Investment Law, 50 ILCEA (2023)
• Theorizing Responsibility in Investor-State Dispute Resolution, 95 St. John’s Law Review 253 (2022)
• Rethinking the Accountability – Immunity Axis through Remedies (PDF, 343.45 KB) 16 Int’l Org. L. Rev. 137 (2019)
• Investment Treaty Arbitration: Making a Place for Small Claims, 19 J. World Investment & Tr.  667 (2018) (peer review)
• The UN Security Council and the Law of Internal Armed Conflict: New Evidence of Customary International Law, co-authored with Greg Fox & Isaac Jenkins, 67 Am. U. L. Rev. 1 (2018).
• U.N. Sanctions as Regulation, 36 Chinese J. Int’l L (2016)  (peer review)
• The United Nationals and Good Samaritan: Immunity and Responsibility 16.2 Chicago J. Int’l L 342 (2016)
• Are Control Tests Fit for the Future? The Slippage Problem in Attribution Doctrines, 15 MELB. J. INT'L. L. 2 (2014) (peer review)
• The High Seas Fisheries:  A Case Study in Scarcity and Redistribution in International Law, 52 U. LOUISVILLE L. REV. 1 (2013)
• The Law of Responsibility:  A Response to Fragmentation?  25 Pac. McGeorge Global Bus. & Dev. L.J. 395 (2012) (symposium).
• Obligations of the New Occupier: The Contours of a Jus Post Bellum, 31 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 108 (2008)
• Coining a New Jurisdiction: The Security Council as Economic Peacekeeper, 41 Vand. J. Transnat'l L.  991 (2008)
• “Open for Business”: International Financial Institutions, Post Conflict Economic Reform and the Rule of Law (PDF, 282.55 KB), 39 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 513 (2007)
• Legislative Reform in Post-Conflict Zones, 50 McGill L.J. 285 (2005) (peer review)
• Rape and Forced Pregnancy Under the ICC Statute, 32 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev.  3 (2001).
• A Response to the American Position on the International Criminal Court, 10 Eur. J. Int'l L. 1 (1999) (coauthor).

• The State of the Netherlands v. Respondents & Stichting Mothers of Srebrenica 114 Am J. In’t L. 479 (2020).
• Reputation and the Accountability Gap, 113 AJIL Unbound 233 (2019).
• Jurisdictional Immunities of the UN and Specialized Agencies (book chapter in Ruys, Angelet & Ferro (eds))
  THE CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL IMMUNITIES (2019).
• Timing Matters:  Terminating U.N. Sanctions, in Handbook on UN Sanctions (van den Herik, ed., 2016) (pgs. 236 - 262). 
• The Role of Lex Specialis in the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, RESPONSIBILITY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS (Maurizio Ragazzi ed., 2013) (pgs. 135-145).
• Review of D. Hovell, The Power of Process:  The Value of Due Progress in Security Council Decision Making, 64 Neth. Int’ Law Rev 177 (2017) (book review).
• Commentary on the Prewitt and Noloklava cases, The Law of International Organizations, Oxford University Press (2015).
• New Directions in Responsibility:  Assessing the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, 37 Yale J. Int'l L. (On-Line) (2011)