Wolfgang Alschner is an empirical legal scholar specialized in international economic law and the computational analysis of law. He holds the Hyman Soloway Chair in Business and Trade Law. Professor Alschner is also Academic in Residence with McMillan LLP and a frequent commentator on trade law and policy. He writes the Substack newsletter Economic Security 101.
Professor Alschner is a Full Professor at the Common Law Section with cross-appointment to the Faculty of Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is also a faculty member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa and heads the uOttawa Legal Technology Lab. Professor Alschner’s teaching materials on computational legal analysis are available on www.datascienceforlawyers.org .
In terms of ongoing research projects, Professor Alschner heads a SSHRC partnership project on Canada’s Critical Minerals Diplomacy and an insight grant on mapping Canada’s internal trade barriers.
Among his other roles and affiliations, Professor Alschner is co-chair of the International Economic Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, and acts as a co-editor of the World Trade Reviewnorth, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of International Economic Law (JIEL) and a member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA). He also co-founded the investment treaty analytics portal www.mappinginvestmenttreaties.comnorth and the Electronic Database of Investment Treaties (EDIT).
He is the author of Investment Arbitration and State-Driven Reform: New Treaties, Old Outcomesnorth, published with Oxford University Press (2022), explores how a new generation of international investment treaties has been rolled back in investment arbitration practice.
Professor Alschner holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, a Master of Law from Stanford Law School, a Master in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute as well as an LLB from the University of London and a BA in International Relations from the University of Dresden, Germany.