Asad Kiyani is currently Assistant Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor with the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction at Western University, where he teaches Criminal Law and Evidence and was recently named the Jay S. McLeod Professor of the Year (2015 – 2016). His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Dr. Natasha Affolder and entitled International Crime and the Politics of Criminal Theory, considered the theoretical foundations of international criminal law from the combined perspective of postcolonial theory and criminal law philosophy. That research was supported by a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC) and a Four-Year Fellowship (UBC), and led to the award of the Charles Bourne Scholarship in International Law and the Dean of Law PhD Prize.
Asad’s research focuses on domestic and transnational criminal law, legal pluralism, and legitimacy theory. His current projects span these interests, exploring the structural and theoretical obstacles to instantiating a legal pluralist approach in international criminal law, the normative justification of self-representation in international and domestic criminal trials, and the role of domestic courts in regulating police conduct. His work has appeared in the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, the American Journal of International Law Unbound, the African Journal of Legal Studies, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, and the Criminal Law Forum, among others. Forthcoming articles will be published in the American Journal of Comparative Law and the Journal of International Criminal Justice. His article in the Chinese Journal of International Law, “Al-Bashir & the ICC: The Problem of Head of State Immunity” was cited by the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa in its recent decision finding that South Africa had an obligation under domestic, but not international law, to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Asad has presented his work at universities across Canada and around the world, including at UCLA, the University of Oslo, the American University in Cairo, and the Free University of Amsterdam, and he was the inaugural speaker at the International Law in the Global South Research Seminar Series at Osgoode Hall Law School.
Asad articled with the Department of Justice in Toronto, worked as a Pegasus Scholar with Garden Court Chambers and 2 Bedford Row in the UK, and was research counsel on the sentence and conviction appeal of Issa Hassan Sesay before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He received his LL.M. (First Class) from the University of Cambridge, and his LL.B. from Osgoode Hall.
