Biography

Stéphane Beaulac is a full professor (professeur titulaire) at our Faculty, where he teaches courses in international law and in constitutional law. He holds a Ph.D. in international law from the University of Cambridge, where he also did an LL.M. in comparative public law (first class honour). His training is bijural: civil law at the University of Ottawa (summa cum laude) and common law at Dalhousie University (first in national program). He was a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy), a Neil MacCormick fellow at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), a James Flaherty fellow at the University College of Cork (Ireland), and a Land Steiermark fellow at the University of Graz (Austria); he was invited as visiting professor in Toulouse, Amsterdam, Ulster, Trento, Padua, Rome and Berlin.

Professor Beaulac is the author (co-author) or co-editor of some 25 law books; he has written more than 120 articles and other academic papers published in law journals (Canada, United States, Europe, Australia) and with renowned publishers, such as Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. His scolarly research is often funded by public organisations, at home and abroad. He is in the top 10% of authors on the SSRN network (all-time downloads). His writings have won awards (e.g. Rector Award 2010, Montreal; Germain-Brière Award 2024, Ottawa) and were also cited numerous times by the Supreme Court of Canada and on a few occasions by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In addition to his numerous conferences here and internationally, sometimes as a keynote speaker, Stéphane is certainly one of our most prominent public intellectuals at the Faculty (600+ interviews and quotes, many of which may be found on his YouTube channel).

Dedicated to public service, Professor Beaulac is keen to offer his expertise when invited to, for example in parliamentary committees in Ottawa or at the National Assembly of Quebec; he has also acted as an intervenor in judicial instances, be it at the Supreme Court of Canada (Ward case, 2021; Bissonnette case, 2022; Montreal School Board case, 2026) or, as amicus curiae, before an international tribunal (Inter-American Court of Human Rights), in 2023. A lawyer with the Ontario Bar and, for some time, counsel with the Quebec Bar, Beaulac has long combined being of counsel (avocat-conseil) in private practice, mainly with the Montreal downtown law firm Dentons LLP. He was recognized by his peers in the compilation Best Lawyers Canada 2025, and again in 2026.

This content has been updated on 22 April 2026 at 21 h 58 min.