Michael Byers is a Canadian legal scholar and non-fiction author.
Byers was educated at the University of Saskatchewan, where he received his BA (honours) with majors in English literature and political studies. He then studied law at McGill University, achieving his LLB and BCL degrees. He completed his studies at Cambridge University, where he received his PhD in international law. Before becoming a professor of political science at University of British Columbia in 2004, he was a research fellow from 1996-1999 at Oxford University and from 1999–2004, he was a professor of law and the director of Canadian Studies at Duke University.
Since 2004, he has held the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Byers has also taught as a visiting professor at the universities of Tel Aviv, Cape Town, Nord (Norway) and Novosibirsk (Russia).