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Professor Mario Mendez, BA (Lond), LLM (William & Mary), BCL (Oxon), PhD (EUI), PGCAP (Queen Mary)

Mario

Professor of Law

Email: mario.mendez@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 3958
Room Number: Mile End

Profile

Mario Mendez graduated with a first class degree in Law and Politics from Queen Mary and was awarded the Drapers’ Scholarship to study at the College of William and Mary in Virginia where he completed an LLM in American Legal Studies. He continued his graduate study at the University of Oxford where he was awarded a distinction on the BCL programme (and the Vinerian Scholarship Proxime Accessit), followed by completing his PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. He was awarded the Post-Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice at Queen Mary with distinction and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

His research interests are mainly in constitutional law (EU, UK and comparative), with particular interests in direct democracy in the EU (including the European Citizens Initiative) and in a broader comparative sense, and UK, EU and comparative foreign relations law. There are two main strands to his current research agenda and he has given evidence to Parliamentary committees (Westminster and the European Parliament) in relation to both. The first concerns the relationship between international law and domestic constitutional systems and was the subject matter of his monograph on The Legal Effects of EU Agreements (Oxford University Press 2013) as well as recent articles (e.g. International Journal of Constitutional Law and the Law Quarterly Review), chapters (e.g. in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law 2019) and on-going research projects. The second strand concerns direct democracy and recent projects include an article in the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, a co-authored study on Referendums on EU Matters (2017) (prepared for the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament), a co-authored monograph Referendums and the European Union: A comparative inquiry (Cambridge University Press 2014) (a book which has its origins in a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation), and chapters in a number of volumes such as the Research Handbook on the Politics of EU Law (2020) and the Palgrave Handbook of European Referendums (2021)).

Mario has worked for the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute and has been a trainee at the European Commission. He has spent periods as a visiting academic at the University of Oxford (Institute of European and Comparative Law), University of Cambridge (Centre for European Legal Studies), the University of Michigan’s Law School, University of Zurich (Centre for Research on Direct Democracy). He is a research associate at the University of Zurich’s e-Democracy centre with whom he collaborated in developing a voting advice application for the 2012 London mayoral elections. He was a lead member of the Queen Mary team that collaborated with the Preference Matcher consortium in developing a voting advice application for the 2015 and 2017 UK General Elections (www.whogetsmyvoteUK.com). He also acted as a legal consultant on matters of EU and foreign relations law.

He is a former member of the editorial committee of the journal Public Law.

He is a member (and former Co-Director) of the Queen Mary Centre for European and International Legal Affairs, and a member of the Queen Mary Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context (CLSGC) and the Queen Mary Centre for European Research.

Undergraduate Teaching

  • LAW4001 Public Law
  • LAW5105 Law of the European Union
  • LAW6160 Comparative Constitutional Law.

Research

Publications

  • ‘Référendums relatif a l’Union Européenne et crises’ (with F. Mendez) in R. Magni-Berton & L. Morel (eds) Démocraties Directes (forthcoming)
  • ‘The European Citizens Initiative: Towards a User-Friendly, Participatory and Powerful Agenda Initiative for the European Union’ in D. Jancic (eds) The Changing Role of Citizens in EU Democratic Governance (Hart, forthcoming)
  • ‘Referendums and EU Integration’ (with F. Mendez) in S. Garben et al Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law (forthcoming)
  • ‘Parliament’s Engagement with Treaties’ (with A. Lang) in A. Horne, L. Thompson, and B. Yong (eds), Parliament and the Law (Hart, 3rd edn, forthcoming 2022).
  • ‘Agenda initiatives in comparative context’ (with F. Mendez) in M. Qvortrup and D. Vancic, Complementary Democracy and Deliberative Listening (DeGruyter, forthcoming 2022).
  • ‘The Legal Effects of the MARPOL Convention and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea: Intertanko’ in G. Butler & R.A. Wessel (eds), EU External Relations Law: The Cases in Context (Hart, forthcoming 2022).
  • ‘EU Accession Referendums’ (with F. Mendez) in J. Smith (ed) The Palgrave Handbook of European Referendums (Palgrave, 2021).
  • ‘Neglecting the treaty-making power in the UK: The case for change’ (2020) 136  Law Quarterly Review 630 (also available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3716107)
  • ‘The Law and Politics of Direct Democracy in the European Union’ (with F. Mendez) in P.J. Cardwell and M-P. Granger (eds), Research Handbook on the Politics of EU Law (Edward Elgar, 2020)
  • ‘The Application of International Law by the Court of Justice of the European Union’ in Bradley (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law (OUP 2019)
  • ‘Referendums on European Integration: Crisis-Solving or Crisis-Inducing?’ (with F. Mendez) in Morel and Qvortrup (eds) The Routledge Handbook to Referendums and Direct Democracy (Routledge 2018)
  • ‘Opinion 1/15: The Court of Justice Meets PNR Data (Again!)’ (2017) 2(3) European Papers 803 (available at: http://www.europeanpapers.eu/en/e-journal/opinion-1-15-court-of-justice-meets-pnr-data-again)
  • ‘The Promise and Perils of Direct Democracy for the European Union’ (with F Mendez) (2017) 19 Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 48
  • Referendums on EU Matters (with F. Mendez) (European Parliament 2017) available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/571402/IPOL_STU(2017)571402_EN.pdf
  • ‘Constitutional Review of Treaties: Lessons for Comparative Constitutional Design and Practice’ (2017) 14 International Journal of Constitutional Law 84 (available at https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/15/1/84/3068322)
    (earlier version published as Jean Monnet Working Paper 08/16)
  • ‘Direct Democracy and the European Union’ (with F. Mendez) in Ruth, S., Welp, Y., and Whitehead, L (eds) Let the people rule? Direct Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, (ECPR Press, 2016) 
  • Referendums and the European Union: A comparative inquiry (with F. Mendez and V. Triga)  (Cambridge University Press 2014) (reviewed in Political Studies Review (2015: 615); EUSA Review (2014: 22); Common  Market Law Review (2015: 604)
  • The Legal Effects of EU Agreements: Maximalist Treaty Enforcement and Judicial Avoidance Techniques (Oxford University Press 2013) (available on open access at:  http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780199606610.pdf) (reviewed in Common Market Law Review (2014: 1548); Yearbook of European Law (2014: 569); Journal of Common Market Studies (2014: 1164); European Law Review (2015: 294); Legal Issues of Economic Integration (2014:211)
  • ‘The Enforcement of EU Agreements: Bolstering the effectiveness of Treaty law?’ (2010) 47(6) Common Market Law Review 1719 (available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3718427)
  • ‘Comparing Privacy Regimes: Federal Theory and the Politics of Privacy Regulation in the European Union and the United States’ (with F. Mendez) (2010) 40(4) Publius: The Journal of Federalism 617.  
  • ‘Referendums and European integration: beyond the Lisbon vote’ (with F. Mendez) [2010] Public Law 223
  • ‘The Legal Effect of Community Agreements: Maximalist Treaty Enforcement and Judicial Avoidance Techniques’ (2010) 21(1) European Journal of International Law 83 (available at: http://www.ejil.org/article.php?article=1989&issue=95)
  •  ‘Direct Democracy in the European Union: How comparative federalism can help us understand the interplay of direct democracy and European integration’ (with F. Mendez and V. Triga) (2009) 29(1) Revista de Ciencia Política 57 (available at:   http://www.revistacienciapolitica.cl/rcp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/03_vol_29_1.pdf
  • Passenger Name Record Agreement (2007) 3(1) European Constitutional Law Review 127 
  • ‘Introducing E-voting for the European Parliament Elections: the Constitutional Problems’ (with A. Auer) in Trechsel and Mendez (eds), The European Union and E-voting (Routledge, 2005)
  • ‘The impact of WTO rulings in the Community legal order’ (2004) 29 European Law Review 513.

Supervision

Dr Mendez welcomes proposals for postgraduate supervision in the fields of UK, EU and comparative constitutional law (especially in the areas of direct democracy in the EU and UK, and also EU, UK and comparative foreign relations law).

Public Engagement

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