Karim Benyekhlef

Karim Benyekhlef has been a professor at University of Montreal’s Faculty of Law since 1989. He has been posted at the Centre de recherche en droit public (public law research centre) since 1990 and was its director from 2006 to 2014. A member of the Barreau du Québec (Quebec bar association) since 1985, he worked in the federal department of justice from 1986 to 1989. His fields of teaching and research are constitutional law (human rights and freedoms), international law, information technology law, and the theory and history of law. In 1995, he founded the online legal journal Lex Electronica, the first online law review in French and one of the first in any language, and he was also the driving force behind the first online conflict resolution projects (CyberTribunal Project, 1996-1999, eResolution, 1999-2001, ECODIR, 2000).

Karim Benyekhlef is the director of the Cyberjustice Laboratory, whose work aims to increase and facilitate access to justice. As part of the Laboratory's activities, he heads an international team of about 30 researchers from more than 23 academic institutions in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe involved in “Rethinking Processual Law: Towards Cyberjustice,” a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as part of the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) program. He has also helped develop good governance programs in Africa and the Caribbean (Canadian International Development Agency, United Nations, and European Commission).

Karim Benyekhlef is the author, with professor Fabien Gélinas (McGill University), of a book entitled Le règlement en ligne des conflits. Enjeux de la cyberjustice (online conflict resolution: issues of cyberjustice), published in 2003 by Éditions Romillat (Paris). In 2008 Éditions Thémis published his work entitled Une possible histoire de la norme. Les normativités émergentes de la mondialisation (a possible history of the norm: the emerging normativities of globalization), which won the Prix de la Fondation du Barreau du Québec (Quebec bar association foundation award) in 2009. Karim Benyekhlef has also edited numerous collective works, including Les secrets du droit (the secrets of law), published by Éditions Thémis in 2014.