Mohamed Helal
Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University; Member, African Union Commission of International Law; Member, Permanent Court of Arbitration.
Mohamed Helal is an Associate Professor of Law at the Michael E. Moritz College of Law and an affiliated faculty member of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. In 2020, he was elected by the Executive Council of the African Union to serve a five-year term on the African Union Commission of International Law, and in 2021 he was appointed to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA).
Dr. Helal specializes in Public International Law. His research interests and scholarship extend to various areas of international law. These include the rules regulating the use of armed force by states (jus ad bellum), international organizations and U.N. law, the theory and history of international law, the law of the non-navigational uses of international watercourses, the law of the sea, and the legal aspects of international security affairs. In addition, Dr. Helal engages in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of international law and international relations theory.
Dr. Helal’s work has appeared in many leading peer-reviewed journals including the European Journal of International Law, Global Constitutionalism, Climate Law, the American Journal of International Law – Unbound, and the Florida Tax Review, and several student-run journals including the Florida State University Law Review, the Harvard National Security Journal, the N.Y.U. Journal of International Law & Politics, the Fordham International Law Journal, the Emory International Law Review, the DePaul Law Review, and the Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy. Dr. Helal has also contributed chapters to numerous edited volumes.
Dr. Helal teaches courses and seminars on Public International Law, the Law of Contracts, the law governing the resort to armed force by states (jus ad bellum), the law of armed conflict (jus in bello), and the theory and history of international law.
Prior to joining Moritz, Dr. Helal was a lecturer-on-law at Harvard Law School where he obtained his SJD and LLM degrees. He also taught International Criminal Law as a visiting assistant professor at the Section Française of the Ain Shams University Faculty of Law and taught International Human Rights Law at the American University in Cairo. During the 2020-2021 academic year, Dr. Helal was a Visiting Associate Professor of Law and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization at Harvard Law School where he taught Public International Law.
Dr. Helal has substantial policy experience in the field of international law through many years of service as a diplomat and as an international civil servant. During the period 2019-2021, Dr. Helal served as the Legal Counsel to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt where he also advised on issues relating to African Affairs and relations with Nile Basin States. Earlier in his career, Dr. Helal also served on the Cabinet of the Secretary General of the League of Arab States during 2002 and 2003. He also joined the Egyptian Diplomatic Corps in 2004 and became a member of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt from 2005 until 2009. During that period, he worked on issues relating to Multilateral Diplomacy and International Organizations, with a focus on human rights and humanitarian affairs at the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. In 2011, Dr. Helal joined the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) as the commission’s legal officer, and he also served as the legal counsel to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt during 2016.