Patrick Keenan
Professor
International Human Rights Clinic
Professor Patrick Keenan’s scholarship explores the connections between human rights, economic and financial regulation, and international law. His most recent work examines the ways that sovereign wealth funds and financial regulation affect human rights and social welfare. His article "Sovereign Wealth Funds and Social Arrears: Should Debts to Citizens Be Treated Differently than Debts to Other Creditors?" appeared in the Virginia Journal of International Law. A second article, "Toward a Multilateral Sovereign Investment Agency," co-authored with Professor Christiana Ochoa, is forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal of International Law.
In addition, his article on the unintended consequences of China’s investments in Africa, Curse or Cure? China, Africa, and the Effects of Unconditioned Wealth, was published in the Berkeley Journal of International Law. His article on the ways that financial regulation can promote or undermine human rights, Financial Globalization and Human Rights, appeared in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. Finally, his articles on the effects of globalization on criminal activity and social norms have appeared in the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law and the Iowa Law Review.
While in law school he co-authored, with Stephen B. Bright, "Judges and the Politics of Death: Deciding Between the Bill of Rights and the Next Election in Capital Cases," published in the Boston University Law Review, which was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, Chairperson, Minnesota Board Of Judicial Standards.
Before becoming a law professor, Professor Keenan litigated death penalty cases in Georgia and Alabama as an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights. Professor Keenan is a graduate of Tufts University and the Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. He served as law clerk for Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama. Before law school, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
His scholarship is available here and here.