Matiangai Sirleaf

Nathan Patz Professor of Law

Phone: (410) 706-4097 Email: msirleaf@law.umaryland.edu Office: 430

Courses: Criminal Law; Global Public Health; International Human Rights Seminar/course; Post-conflict and Transitional Justice Seminar

Biography Publications

Biography

Matiangai Sirleaf is the Nathan Patz Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law. Professor Sirleaf writes and teaches in the areas of global public health law, public international law, international human rights law, international criminal law, post-conflict and transitional justice and criminal law. Professor Sirleaf previously served as an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, as an assistant professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and as a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Professor Sirleaf ‘s scholarly agenda is to make visible the extant hierarchies in international law and to remedy the inequities reflected in it. Her work seeks to elucidate how seemingly neutral laws further global inequities. Her current research agenda sits at the crossroads between international human rights law and global public health law, where she analyzes the disproportionate distribution of highly infectious diseases and the role of international law in facilitating this result. Another branch of her scholarship sits at the intersection of international criminal law and transitional justice. This area of Professor Sirleaf’s scholarship proposes context-specific and locally informed approaches to providing redress to survivors of human rights violations and theorizes avenues for greater involvement of historically subordinated peoples in the making of international law. The common thread through all her scholarship whether examining issues of racial justice, civil and political violations, or socio-economic violations, is responsibility. International law conceives of responsibility in narrow ways and her scholarships seeks to render it more emancipatory.

Professor Sirleaf’s work has been featured in leading law reviews such as the Cardozo Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review. Professor Sirleaf’s commentary and reflections also appear in several online fora such as, AfronomicsLaw, American Society of International Law Insights, Bill of Health, Jurist, Just Security, Opinio Juris, and Third World Approaches to International Law Review.

Professor Sirleaf also serves as executive editor at Just Security and is a member of the board of editors for the American Journal of International Law. Professor Sirleaf is editing the first thematic print volume in a new partnership with Just Security and OUP Academic, which builds off her Racing National Security symposium. Race & National Security will be forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2023.

Professor Sirleaf has received a number of prestigious grants, awards, fellowships, and other honors. These include the University of Pittsburgh’s Teaming Grant (2020), the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award (2019), the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics Health Law Scholar Selection (2019), the University Center for International Studies Faculty Fellowship (2018-2019), the Ford Institute for Human Security Research Grant (2016-2018), the New York University Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award (2014) and a Fulbright Fellowship (2004).

A graduate of Yale Law School, the University of Ghana Legon Center for International Affairs, and New York University College of Arts and Sciences, Professor Sirleaf has served in a number of attorney and fellow roles prior to entering academia. These roles include: Human Rights Fellow at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll (2010-2012); Law Clerk, Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, Constitutional Court of South Africa (2009-2010); and Bernstein Fellow at the International Center for Transitional Justice (2008-2009).

Publications

Books

Editor, Race and National Security (Oxford University Press forthcoming 2023).

Book Chapters

COVID-19 and Cooperation in Times of Disaster, in The Cambridge Handbook of Disaster Law and Policy 221 (Susan S. Kuo, John Travis Marshall & Ryan Rowberry eds., 2022). [Full Text]

Global Health Law: Legal Foundations for Social Justice in Public Health, in Foundations of Global Health and Human Rights (Lawrence O. Gostin & Benjamin Mason Meier eds., 2020) (with Lawrence O. Gostin & Eric Friedman). [Full Text]

Prosecuting Dirty Dumping in Africa, in The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in Context 553 (Charles C. Jalloh & Kammari Clark eds., 2019). [Full Text]

Articles

We Charge Vaccine Apartheid, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (forthcoming 2023).

Disposable Lives: COVID-19, Vaccines, and the Uprising, 121 Columbia Law Review Forum 71 (2021). [Full Text]

Racial Valuation of Diseases, 67 UCLA Law Review 1820 (2021). [Full Text]

"I Can't Breathe": Connecting COVID-19, Protests, and Global Health, 114 Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting 373 (2020).

Capacity-Building, International Cooperation, and COVID-19, 24 ASIL Insights, No. 17 (2020). [Full Text]

Entry Denied: COVID-19, Race, Migration & Global Health, 2 Frontiers in Human Dynamics 599157 (2020). [Full Text]

Responsibility for Epidemics, 97 Texas Law Review 285 (2018). [Full Text]

Not Your Dumping Ground: Criminalization of Trafficking in Hazardous Waste in Africa, 35 Wisconsin Journal of International Law 326 (2018). [Full Text]

Ebola Does Not Fall from the Sky: Global Structural Violence and International Responsibility, 51 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 477 (2018). [Full Text]

The African Justice Cascade and the Malabo Protocol, 11 International Journal of Transitional Justice 71 (2017). [Full Text]

Regionalism, Regime Complexes and International Criminal Justice in Africa, 54 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 699 (2016). [Full Text]

The Truth About Truth Commissions: Why They Do Not Function Optimally in Post-Conflict Societies, 35 Cardozo Law Review 2263 (2014). [Full Text]

Beyond Truth and Justice in Transnational Justice, 54 Virginia Journal of International Law 195 (2014). [Full Text]

Regional Approach to Transitional Justice? Examining the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Liberia, 21 Florida Journal of International Law 209 (2009). [Full Text]

Matiangai Sirleaf

Nathan Patz Professor of Law

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