Dr. Joshua Karton is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s. His research is interdisciplinary, focusing on international arbitration, comparative and international contract law, uniform law, globalization and law, international legal theory, and sociological analysis of law. His writing explores what happens when private actors from different backgrounds – legal, cultural, and linguistic – meet in the international legal arena.

In between receiving his JD from Columbia Law School and his PhD in International Law from Cambridge, he practiced in litigation and arbitration in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. Dr. Karton has also held visiting positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the National Taiwan University, and Wuhan University (China).

In this episode, he discusses how interdisciplinary approaches to researching law as a social institution are the best methods to understand how it reflects the organization of society. In particular, Dr. Karton researches how private arbitration, as a procedural choice, impacts the substance of actual disputes compared to a public court venue. He also explores how language affects the international arbitration system within legal law understandings.

Please visit the Faculty of Law for more information about Dr. Karton's research.