Dean’s Key recipient attends Harvard as Knox Fellow

Gerard Kennedy, Law '10, Knox Fellow

Gerard Kennedy, Law ‘10, began pursuing an LLM at Harvard this fall as the recipient of a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship. The award, given to three Canadian students for graduate studies at Harvard University each year, includes tuition, health insurance and a $25,000 living expense stipend.

His former professor Mark Walters, Law ‘89, is confident that Kennedy, who clerked at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto last year, will continue to excel. “Gerard was one of the top students in his year. He set very high standards for himself and never ceased working to meet them, bringing to his work a sense of intellectual curiosity and a capacity for critical reflection that are fundamental to legal scholarship.”

Kennedy calls the award an “overwhelming honour” and says he feels “very fortunate.” He is studying how international human rights law affects domestic criminal law in the way states procedurally can and should go about prosecuting international and transnational crimes.

His interest in the area was stimulated by studying at Queen’s Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle and interning at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. “I have become painfully aware,” he says, “of the limited extent to which the United Nations and many other international bodies can effectively assist in realizing human rights and combating international and transnational crime.

“This,” he adds, “has led me to wonder how domestic law, both criminal and constitutional, can assist in this regard.”