Dr Kasey McCall-Smith

Senior Lecturer in Public International Law

Director of Postgraduate Research

BA, JD, LLM, PhD

Office hours:

Monday 09:30-11:00

Tel: 0131 651 4524

Email: kasey.mccall-smith@ed.ac.uk

SSRN: Papers

View my publications

Dr McCall-Smith is a senior lecturer in Public International Law and programme director for the LLM in Human Rights. She joined the Law School on a permanent basis in 2014. She is a US qualified lawyer and holds a BA and a Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas. She also holds an LLM and PhD from the University of Edinburgh.

She is an active researcher in international human rights law, treaty law and is interested in how different actors contribute to the development of international law, including the role of treaty bodies as generators of law. For several years she has been exploring best practice in relation to incorporating human rights treaties into national law with a focus on how different actors negotiate the vertical relationship between international and national law. Dr McCall-Smith works alongside numerous civil society organisations and channels this practical experience into her teaching and programming on the LLM in Human Rights. She also has carried out extensive research on the issues of torture and fair trial in the US military commissions in Guantanamo and the conditions of detention, including how detention relates to the prohibition against torture.

Dr McCall-Smith’s work on treaty law focuses on reservations to and interpretation of treaties. While much of her work has focused on human rights treaties, particularly the ICCPR, ICESCR and UNCRC, her current work concerns the ways in which treaty law engenders coherence and divergence across different fields of international law.

Her current research projects include Understanding the Environmental Conditions of Detention and multiple projects focused on implementing the UNCRC Incorporation Act 2024 alongside colleagues in the Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland.

She is currently the Director of Postgraduate Research at the Law School and the Director of the Global Justice Academy. From 2017-2023 she was the Executive Chair of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI). Since 2020, she served as a member of the Academic Advisory Panel to the Scottish Government’s Human Rights Task Force and the Expert Advisory Group on UNCRC Incorporation. She is a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas (USA) and KU Leuven (Belgium). Alongside her role as an academic, Dr McCall-Smith acts as a consultant on projects across a range of issues relating to human rights and the law of treaties.

Twitter: @KMSonIntlLaw