Douglas Johnston

2006 Read Medal Recipient (Posthumously)

St.Andrews University (Scotland), LL.M. (McGill), J.S.D. (Yale)

Douglas Johnston taught New School for Social Research in New York City, University of Western Ontario, Louisiana State University, the University of Toronto, Dalhousie University, the National University of Singapore and the University of Victoria. He also held the titles of Emeritus Professor at U Vic and Adjunct professor at Dalhousie Law School. 

Dr. Johnston published over 30 books and 90 articles in the theory and history of international law, law of the sea, marine and environmental policy, comparative law, modern Chinese studies and public policy issues. Three of his books: The International Law of Fisheries: A Framework for Policy-Oriented Inquiries (1965); The Theory and History of Ocean boundary Making (1988); and Consent and Commitment in the World Community: The Classification and Analysis of International Instruments (1997) are classic works on functionalist theory and approaches to ocean law and policy.

Together with the late Ronald St. John Macdonald, as co-editor, Dr. Johnston brought together leading international scholars to contribute to four landmark works in public international law and global constitutionalism, namely Canadian Perspectives on International Law and Organization (with Gerald Morris, 1974), The International Law and Policy of Human Welfare (also with Gerald Morris, 1978), The Structure and Process of International Law: Modern Essays in Legal Philosophy, Doctrine and Theory (1983) and more recently Towards World Constitutionalism: Issues in the Legal Ordering of the World (2005). Sadly, Dr. Johnston died while completing an interdisciplinary history of international law from antiquity to present times. Titled The Tower and the Arena: The Historical Foundations of World Order, the book is expected to be published next year.

Dr. Johnston was actively involved in the creation of the Dalhousie Ocean Studies Programme (DOSP, which eventually evolved into the Oceans Institute of Canada), the Marine and Environmental Programme (MELP, now the MEL Institute) at Dalhousie University, the Southeast Asian Programme in Ocean Law, Policy and Management (SEAPOL) centred in Bangkok and the Maritime Awards Society of Canada (MASC), which is dedicated to providing graduate student scholarships in marine affairs.