Professor

John

Linarelli

John Linarelli is Vice Dean, John E Murray Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.  

His scholarship is in commercial, financial, and private law, and he has also written extensively on international trade law.  His work is interdisciplinary, drawing on moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, psychology, and economics.
Vice Dean Linarelli’s work in financial regulation is on the role of debt, be it corporate, consumer, or government debt, in society. This work is interdisciplinary and focuses on the use of egalitarian theory, such as luck egalitarianism and contractualist moral theory, to focus on both individual choice in credit transactions and the role of debt in the delivery of social goods such as banking, housing, and education. His recent work includes co-organizing a symposium with Orkun Akseli (Manchester), Iris Chiu (University College London), and Steven Schwarcz (Duke) on Financial Inclusion, Access to Credit, and Sustainable Finance, published in Law and Contemporary Problems in 2021. It also includes publications in the peer-reviewed journals, Regulation and Governance and the Journal of Applied Philosophy. He is currently working on a project on the private and public law of digital assets. 
Vice Dean Linarelli’s current research agenda focuses on artificial intelligence and contract law. This work draws on analytical philosophy and philosophy of mind to study how post-generative AI could affect contract law and contract practices. This work includes publications in the Research Handbook on the Law of Artificial Intelligence, published by Edward Elgar, and the Cambridge Handbook at the Intersection of Commercial Law and Technology, published by Cambridge University Press, and an article in the Uniform Law Review, the official publication of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT). He is frequently invited to speak on contract law, financial regulation, and artificial intelligence. 
Professor Linarelli is co-editor, with Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballel, Professor of Commercial Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, of the Hart Studies in Commercial and Financial Law book series. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/hart-studies-in-commercial-and-financial-law/. The book series has published a range of important books on diverse topics, from regulation of digital assets to global banking. 
Vice Dean Linarelli has led in bringing philosophical theories of global justice in contact with international law. His award-winning book, The Misery of International Law: Confrontations with Injustice in the Global Economy, co-authored with Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah (National University of Singapore) and Margot Salomon (London School of Economics), published by Oxford University Press, won the European Society of International Law Book Prize in 2019. The book has earned critical acclaim, including from Hilary Charlesworth, a judge at the International Court of Justice. He has edited two books on global justice and international economic law, one published by Cambridge University Press and the other by Edward Elgar. 
Professor Linarelli has been invited on numerous occasions to speak and has delivered over 75 talks and papers worldwide. He has served in senior faculty and leadership positions on both sides of the Atlantic. He was formerly a Professor of Commercial Law at Durham University in the United Kingdom, where he was co-director of Durham’s Institute for Commercial and Corporate Law and where he taught Global Financial Law. While at Durham, he was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School. He has served in various capacities for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT, and other intergovernmental organizations. Professor Linarelli is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the European Law Institute. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of World Investment and Trade.