Claire Breen

Claire M. Breen is a New Zealand law academic, and as of 2021 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. Her work focuses on children's legal rights, international human rights and international peace and security.

Academic career
Breen has a Bachelor of Civil Law from University College Cork, and an LLM (International Law) from the University of Nottingham. After a PhD titled The standard of the best interests of the child as a tradition of Western inconsistencies at the University of Nottingham in 1999, Breen moved to the University of Waikato, rising to full professor in 2019.

Breen's research focuses on the rights of the child, and in particular how 'a more inclusive understanding' of children can create a better legal framework for law and policy. She has published two influential monographs on child rights, The Standard of the Best Interests of the Child (Martinus Nijhoff, 2003) and Age Discrimination and Children’s Rights (Martinus Nijhoff, 2006), and another on socio-economic influences on international peace, Economic and Social Rights and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security (Routledge, 2017). Breen and colleague Alexander Gillespie published a history of New Zealand law in 2022.

Recent articles by Breen cover a range of issues, including how New Zealand should deal with the return of an alleged ISIS terrorist to New Zealand, with reference to the rights of the two children involved, access to beaches for some disabled people, and how the ACC system discriminates against women by not covering birth injuries.