Dr Margot Salomon

Dr Margot Salomon

Associate Professor of Law

LSE Law School

Telephone
020-7955-6922
Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 6.16
Connect with me

Languages
English, French
Key Expertise
International Law, Development & Poverty; Human Rights & Political Economy

About me

Margot Salomon is Associate Professor at LSE Law School and directs the multidisciplinary Lab (Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy) at LSE Human Rights. Her research explores the roles and distributional effects of international law with current projects focused on the emerging field of transformative international human rights law. Recent publications consider contradictions in the radical articulation of peasant rights (London Review of International Law); and adjudicating socio-economic rights in structural context and indigenous land rights outside of capital accumulation (Leiden Journal of International Law). Margot’s research draws inspiration from a variety of disciplines including political economy, critical development studies, and counter-hegemonic and 4th world approaches to international law. In 2019 Margot was awarded the European Society of International Law Book Prize for The Misery of International Law (with Linarelli and Sornarajah) and in 2018 she became a laureate of a Belgian European Francqui Chair. She is currently a member of the inaugural Editorial Board of LSE Press, a fully open access publishing house.

Margot has been a consultant to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on extreme poverty and human rights (2009) and the World Bank’s Nordic Trust Fund on human rights and economics (2011); Advisor to the UN High-level Task Force on the Right to Development (2004-2009); and a member of the International Law Association's Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2008-2012). She was on the Drafting Committee of the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2009-2011) and from 2009-2017 was Vice-Chair of the Association of Human Rights Institutes. In 2015 she was invited by the Speaker of the Greek Parliament to provide legal advice on socio-economic rights and international conditionality and in 2017-18 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, working on an EU funded project entitled: 'Legal Rights and the Political Economy of Debt and Austerity in Europe'.

At LSE Margot currently sits on the Editorial Board of LSE Press and on the School’s Scholars at Risk (SAR) Working Group, having helped secure LSE’s membership in SAR in 2006. As a member of the law school's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, she contributed to efforts towards meeting the requirements of the Athena Swan Equality Charter Mark. From 2013-2016,  Margot sat on LSE’s Ethics Policy Committee and from 2004-2015 she was a member of the Advisory Board at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights (now LSE Human Rights). Prior to joining LSE in 2004, she was representative to the United Nations and to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights at Minority Rights Group International.

Margot supervises PhD candidates working, inter alia, on socio-economic rights, global development, and globalisation and law and welcomes applicants interested in critically-engaged approaches to these subjects, including applicants animated by the turn to commoning, postgrowth, and postdevelopment paradigms. She convenes the LLM courses World Poverty and Human Rights, Selected Topics in International Human Rights Law, as well as the Executive LLM course on International Human Rights. Margot holds a PhD in International Law from LSE, an LLM in International Human Rights Law from University College London, and an MA in Comparative European Social Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Her BA was received from Concordia University in Montreal.

Administrative support:- Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk

Research interests

Thematic interests include: Poverty, inequality and international law; legal regimes of dispossession and the global economy; rights over natural resources and economic self-determination; commons, postgrowth, postdevelopment, and radical democracy; socio-economic and (post)development rights; the rights of indigenous peoples and peasants; land rights; environmental justice; the UN; international financial institutions; European Union; as well as geographical interests in Africa, Latin America as elsewhere.

Disciplinary inspiration: global economic history; international political economy; economic sociology; critical development studies; and various heterodox approaches to international law.

Research Impact Case Study

External activities

Keynote lecture at Amnesy International Retreat (21 March 2023)

Laureate of the Belgian (European) Francqui Chair (2018-19)

Work on debt, austerity and international law

-  Visiting Scholar, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (2017-18)
-  'Of Austerity, Human Rights and International Institutions' European Law Journal (2015) [working paper available]
-  Legal Advisor to the Speaker of the Greek Parliament (2015)
-  'La Troika e i Diritti Umani' La Repubblica, 4.05.2015
-  Legal Brief with O. De Schutter, 15.06.2015
-  'Die Austeritätspolitik verletzt Menschenrechte' Zeit Online Interview, 20.07.15
-  'Europe’s Debt to Greece' EJIL Talk! 24.08.15

Editorial Board, Edward Elgar Monograph Series on Studies in Human Rights (2014-present).

Lead Author, World Bank Study on the Integration of Human Rights in Development Policies and Programs and its Economic Impact and Implications (Part 1: Human Rights and Economics: Tensions, Synergies and Ways Forward) (2012).

Guest Editor, Global Policy Journal. Special Section on International Law, Human Rights, and the Global Economy: Innovations and Expectations for the 21st Century (2012).

Drafting Committee, Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2009-11).

Vice-Chair, Association of Human Rights Institutes (2009-17).

Advisory Board, Centre for Law and Cosmopolitan Values, University of Antwerp (2009-present).

Expert Consultant, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN:

- Background Paper on the views of States and other Stakeholders/Conference Rapporteur/Final Report (Technical Review), Draft Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights (2009).  (P5)
- UN Social Forum, Human Rights and the Global Economy (2009).
- UN High-Level Task Force on the Right to Development (2004-09).

Editorial Board, European Yearbook of Human Rights (2009-present).

Associate, Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, LSE (2008-present).

Senior Consultant, Ford Foundation, Darfur Initiative Evaluation (2008).

Association of Human Rights Institutes:

-  Member, Working Group on the UN Human Rights Monitoring Machinery. Research Project on the Role of the EU in UN Human Rights Reform (2008-12)
-  Member, Working Group on Human Rights and Development. Research Project on Human Rights, Peace and Security in EU Foreign Policy (2005-08)

Member, Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, International Law Association (2008-12).

Visiting Lecturer, UN University, Tokyo (2006).

Teaching

Books

The Misery of International Law: Confrontations with Injustice in the Global Economy (Oxford University Press 2018), (with J Linarelli and M Sornarajah)

Winner of the 2019 European Society of International Law Book Prize.

click here for publisher's site

Review:

Leiden Journal of International Law (2019) [online first]

Revue Critique de Droit International Privé (April-June 2019) p.632

Journal of International Economic Law (2019) [online first] 

Melbourne Journal of International Law (2018) Volume 19 pp.763-772

International Affairs, Volume 94, Issue 6, 1 November 2018, pp.1463-1464

 


 

Global Responsibility for Human Rights : World Poverty and the Development of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Challenges to the exercise of the basic socio-economic rights of half the global population give rise to some of the most pressing issues today. This timely book focuses on world poverty, providing a systematic exposition of the evolving legal responsibility of the international community of states to cooperate in addressing the structural obstacles that contribute to this injustice. This book analyzes the approach, contribution, and current limitations of the international law of human rights to the manifestations of world poverty, inviting the reader to rethink human rights, and, in particular, the framing of responsibilities that are essential to their contemporary protection

click here for publisher's site

Reviews:

The Cambridge Law Journal 2008 Vol. 67 (3) pp 656-658

European Journal of International Law 2009 20 (3) 922-923

Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 2009 29 (4) 827-847

Public Law 2009 (Oct) 866-869  [LSE LOGIN]


 

Casting the Net Wider: Human Rights, Development and New Duty-Bearers (Intersentia, 2007) (ed. with Arne Tostensen and Wouter Vandenhole)

This edited volume brings together scholars and practitioners to address the question as to whether, in our globalised world, the protection of economic, social and cultural rights in the South has or should become the duty of actors beyond the state. It explores the role of actors such as transnational business, international financial institutions, supranational organisations and influential states that are involved in or impact on human rights in developing countries. In adopting a ‘responsibilities approach’, it seeks to clarify the nature, content and scope of their contemporary duties.

click here for publisher's site

Articles and Chapters

Reports / Essays / Opinion Pieces