LEONARDO BORLINI

I currently teach International Law, Law International Trade and Investment Law, Topics in International and European Law, Comparative Business and European Law, and National and International Institutions Law (at Bocconi).

M.sc in Economics and Business Administration from Bocconi University (magna cum laude) and M.sc in Law (J.D. equivalent) from the University of Pavia (magna cum laude). LL.M from the University of Cambridge. Ph.D. in International Law and Economics from Bocconi University (magna cum laude). Attorney-at-Law at the Milan Bar.

I am the Lead Expert for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)'s Global Programme, Governance for People and Planet (G4PP) –Compliance and effectiveness of global anti-corruption measures, norms, and standards, and, since 2023, an External Ethics Advisor to the Ethics Committee of the Boards of Directors of the African Development Bank Group.

At Bocconi, I am a Faculty Member of the Ph.D. in Legal Studies, a Fellow at BAFFI CAREFIN (Centre for Applied Research on International Markets, Banking, Finance, and Regulation), a Fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking (IEP), and a member of the Bocconi Covid Crisis Lab. I’m co-editor-in-chief of the Bocconi Legal Papers Research Series. I am also an Adjunct Professor of International Law at the City University of Hong Kong. 

I have held visiting positions, among others, at Peking University, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Singapore Management University, Yong Pung How School of Law, and the City University of Hong Kong. In 2019, I was a Fulbright Grant Researcher at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. 

In 2021, the Italian National Scientific Committee unanimously declared me a Full Professor of International Law. In 2018, I was unanimously declared an Associate Professor of International Law.

Before joining Bocconi University, I was an Associate Lawyer at Grande Stevens Law firm in Milan. Apart from my academic appointments, I have served the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a Technical Assistance Specialist (2011-2013) and authored and co-authored reports commissioned by the Council of Europe, the European Commission, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Since 2011, I have participated in technical assistance programs led by the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank, with field missions in Greece, Vietnam, Panama, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia. I was a member of the Italian delegation to the V Conference of State Parties of the United Nations Convention against Corruption. 

My study,  Compliance Mechanisms as a Diagnostic and Prognostic Tool for the Evolution of International Anti-Corruption Cooperation: A Data-Driven Study, is a forthcoming symposium slated for publication in the issue 22(2) of ICON-International Constitutional Law Journal (2024). The same symposium will also host the articles Three Decades of International Cooperation against Corruption (with Anne Peters) and The Normative Development of Laws on Asset Preservation and Confiscation (with Cecily Rose).

I have recently contributed to the book International Courts versus Non-Compliance Mechanisms. Comparative Advantages in Strengthening Treaty Compliance (Cambridge University Press, 2024), edited by Cristina Voigt & Caroline Foster, with a chapter titled Monitoring Compliance in International Criminal Law. The book is golden open access, which means that, thanks to the Pluricourts' support, the text is freely available for all readers from the CUP website at this link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/international-courts-versus-noncompliance-mechanisms/832980EC405E5DD59FE60664EFFD1B8B  

In 2023, I edited and contributed to the Special Issue, The Resurgence of the State as an Economic Actor, published in 24(1) German Law Journal (2023). Below are the Introductory Editorial and Special Issue links.

Editorial: https://germanlawjournal.com/editorial-volume-24-no-1/ 

Special Issue (Open Access): https://germanlawjournal.com/volume-24-issue-1/

For my article Deepening International Systems of Subsidy Control in EU PTAs: A Comparative Analysis. Normative Rationales and Legal Implications, in 23(3) Columbia Journal of European Law, 2016/17, 551, in May 2019, I received the ‘Leonardo Da Vinci Medal,’ awarded by the Conference of University Rectors for the best scientific or artistic original work by a young Italian researcher, as well as the University Bocconi Legal Studies Award 2018. The article is available here. 

I am a generalist public international lawyer with a keen interest in international economic law. Beyond this field, I have worked on various specialist areas, such as the law of treaties, UN maintenance of international peace and security, international criminal law, human rights, and the law of the EU (External action, Common commercial policy, Competition policy).

My research has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as the European Journal of International Law, Leiden Journal of International Law, Virginia Journal of International Law, American Journal of International Law, German Law Journal , Revue générale de droit international public, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Columbia Journal of European Law, International Journal of Constitutional Law ICON, NYU Journal of International Law & Politics, Global Community Yearbook of International Law & Jurisprudence, and Yearbook of European Law.