Biography: Professor Philippe Joseph Sands

By Lesley Dingle ¹

On warm a Spring Monday 18 May and a sweltering Thursday 25 June, 2026 – I was privileged to interview Professor Philippe Sands at his home in leafy Hampstead for the Eminent Scholars Archive. I also briefly met his wife Natalia and his younger daughter, Katya.

This is a brief biography of Professor Sands based on our interviews. [I shall cite his quotations by reference to question numbers in the interviews: Qxx.]

A Lawyer for the people

Philippe Sands is a man of many parts, and these he has interwoven to produce a legal and a popular personality who is equally at home in a university lecture theatre, a court room, or a television studio expounding international law to what he calls “ordinary folk”. Because of his empathy with these two personas, he is both well-known on the high street of Hampstead while being revered by his legal peers and undergraduates at the major universities of the world. Arguably he is the best-known international lawyer on the global stage today.

As one might expect, my two interviews with Philippe Sands contain fascinating details of his life, career, and legal and political beliefs. They are an invaluable addition to the Cambridge ESA. He shows himself to be a Lawyer for the People. And soon, I expect, he will be a Lawyer for the Natural World.

Like many people in legal circles in academia and practice, before I interviewed Professor Sands, I was aware of his seminal legal texts, and in what seemed another dimension, his famous popular books that related to his Polish family’s tragic history in the Holocaust; notable East West Street. What I was unaware of, was that Philippe saw these two activities as part and parcel of the same vision that he has of International Law.

Many scholars, notably Phillip Allott, who was one of Philippe’s teachers at Cambridge, also had an expansive vision of the role that international law should play in ordinary peoples’ lives. What these interviews show me is that Professor Sands takes his preaching of this vision to another level. And his vision is, I propose, unique in the modern fraternity of international lawyers – and if not unique, then he is the most successful and high-profile personality in the game. In other words, Philippe Sands is the most successful lawyer in currently spreading the word of new perspectives on international law.

How can I summarise his vision, as he explained it in his interviews?

• International Law should be “the protection of the value system that was represented in that moment in 1945 which was about saying that the power of the state is not unlimited” [Q106].
• To get his views across, he believes that “writing for international lawyers ….is not enough. If we are going to protect and safeguard the values we care about, we have to reach ordinary folk and the only way to reach ordinary folk is by writing books or being engaged in radio or television or podcasts or whatever reaches these people…” [Q52].
• While the values he cares about are promoted by international courts and international lawyers…”even more they’re promoted by regular folks, including people who tell stories in novels, in non-fiction, in poetry, and in film...” and that international law “must go forward hand in hand with these other worlds in which the telling of stories, which is in large part what international law is about, are also allowed to proceed.” [Q106].
• This is the current state of affairs, in which Professor Sands places human rights centre stage. But his earlier work on environmental law is soon to be fused with a new vision in which the rights of the Natural World will be expounded. Philippe is due to publish The Fifth Crime: On Ecocide, Justice and Hope in 2027 [Q97].

Underlying his very personal affinity with the importance and significance of international law, is his family history – I shall expand on this anon – but suffice to say here, that the close-knit family of which he was part, always made Philippe feel that the “…environment you grow up in is absolutely formative of who you are and what you’re interested in.” [Q4]. Consequently, the fact that his mother was French, and he is Jewish, meant that Philippe felt that, beginning at school and continuing into later life, he was “not part of, you know, like everyone else, [I] was different, and I think that has continued.” [Q4]. It was this sense of feeling “like a bit of an outsider” that when he was at university, that the law subject “that resonated the most was international law.” [Q4].

It is also a sobering thought that we are very fortunate that Philippe did Law at all, let alone international law. It was only because the economics courses at Corpus Christi in 1978 were not entirely to his liking (he says his economics teacher at school, Mr Edmund Burke, was “wonderful”), that he switched to Law as a second choice, and this was mainly because of the enthusiasm of a Yorkshireman – Professor Robbie Jennings. Jennings was noted (as other ESA scholars have testified in their interviews) as a straight-talking, no-nonsense northerner, who had a very down-to-earth vision of international law himself. In fact, it was an earlier Yorkshireman, Mr Burke, at Philippe’s secondary school, who showed Philippe’s class the rough conditions in northern coal mines of the 1970s that made Philippe realise that not all the “ordinary folk” of England had the comfortable existence he and his family had in London. This realisation sowed the seeds for Philippe of what rights these folks also deserved. It was bridging this gap, between the ordinary person in the street and international law that Philippe has strived for throughout his career.

Finally, I give readers a conundrum to consider while they contemplate his life thus far. When I asked Philippe Sands whether he would take the same career path again, should he be able to replay the tape of time, he replied, somewhat unexpectedly, that he would not – he would not have studied law: “I wish I’d done literature or history”. But he also saw the conundrum that this presented: “…and it would probably have been a terrible mistake, because …the path that I am thrilled to be on now, I wake up every morning totally happy with what I do, a wonderful feeling, would have been different.” [Q56]

But I wonder. After listening to his account of his literary career (in contrast to his legal career), it is clear that by writing and putting his all-embracing ideas down on paper, he would still have written his famous books, such as East West Street. And more than likely, with his innovation and drive he would surely have then studied law to give these imaginative works a solid legal foundation. And in time, his originality is bound to have led him in the direction of human, environmental, and natural rights. Consequently, his preoccupation with, and concern for “rights” and “fairness” would not have been thwarted. They would just have been achieved by another trajectory. But this scenario is perhaps as much a fantasy as re-running the tape of time.

Early Life: Hampstead (1960-1978)

Philippe Sands sees himself as a prodigy of what he called a “middle-class kind of environment...” that was not intellectual, even though his father did go to university.

He was born and grew up in north London, close to where he now lives in Hampstead, and this area has remained his “centre of gravity”, with which he strongly identifies. His mother (now 88yrs), and brother Marc (63yrs) still live in the area, and Philippe and his brother follow Arsenal football club whose stadium is about 2.7 miles as the crow flies ² from where we sat during our interviews. For many years, Philippe has been a legal and literary personality who has been in great demand globally, and having a close knit-community to which he can return is “very, very important” to him. This sense of family togetherness and affinity with his local surroundings was a factor that Professor Sands brought out in answer to my very first question. [Q1].

Although his parents are Jewish, their legacies from the Second World War are quite different. Allan Sands ³, his father, grew up in London during WWII, and was evacuated (16yrs old) out of central London to Stevenage to avoid the Luftwaffe Blitz of September 1940 to May 1941. After the war he trained as a dentist who worked for the NHS ⁴. None of Allan’s immediate paternal relatives were directly involved in the horrors of the WWII concentration camps and the Holocaust.

In strong contrast, his mother, Ruth ⁵ née Buchholz, was born in Vienna in 1938. Her father Leon ⁶ (Philippe’s maternal grandfather) fled the Anschluss in1938 for Paris, leaving his baby daughter and wife Regina (Rita) née Landes behind. Ruth was brought to Paris by an evangelical missionary Elsie Tilney ⁷ in July 1939, while Regina stayed behind to look after her own mother. As Philippe comments poignantly, “I really owe my existence, in a sense, to Miss Tilney.” [Q1]

[It was the loss of most of Leon’s relatives who remained in Lemberg in a 1943 massacre that forms a central theme of Philippe’s East West Street, and which he later realised linked him to Hersch Lauterpacht ⁸, whose immediate relatives suffered a similar fate in 1942.]

When Paris was liberated by the allies in 1944, Ruth was re-united with her parents and she grew up in Paris, but made visits to London to see her maternal uncle, and it was here she “met this young English wannabe dentist” [Q1]. They were married in Paris in 1957 and moved to London, where they lived in Belsize Park, next door to Hampstead. Allan established a dental practice and Ruth “ran a children’s bookshop” – in fact it was a joint venture called M&R Glendale with Monika Sears, which Ruth operated from her home, where they specialised in rare, illustrated 19th-century books, children's literature, and ephemeral print pieces, which they showed at Antiquarian bookfairs (Monika’s son Paul was his first friend at nursery, aged three, and they remain very close today, like family). Philippe’s exposure to this milieu must have influenced his love of books, literature, and things literary.

For a person so driven by his sense of social justice, it was surprising to hear Philippe say that “Politics was not a big issue in the household, I would say. It was sort of a conservative household with a small “c”…”, and here, he was referring to his Belsize Park home. In sharp distinction, Professor Sands’s strong social values were nurtured on his frequent visits to Paris where he became influenced by his maternal grandfather, Leon Buchholz, whom Philippe described as “an old-style Léon Blum-type socialist ⁹”, and to whom he was “very close”. Professor Sands said that Leon Buchholz had “a big influence on my life”, and Blum’s democratic socialism shines through in many of Philippe’s attitudes on fairness and human rights.

The Belsize Park family of Allan, Ruth, Philippe and Marc visited the Buchholz’s in Paris at least once a year, and would travel either by air or take the ferry across the Channel. They would also have a summer holiday on the continent in France, Spain or Portugal. Philippe said the fact that General Franco ¹⁰, the dictator, still ruled in Spain did not trouble his parents. Their trips to Portugal (where coincidentally, General Salazar ¹¹ also ruled as a dictator backed by the military until 1970), were sometimes taken with another family which contained his “oldest friend in the world”, Paul whom he had met at kindergarten and with whom he is still in touch. The picture that Professor Sands paints is one of “…quite an ordinary life…we were privileged, we had everything we needed.” [Q2].

This rather sedate, steady-state existence in middle-class north London, was given a severe jolt when Philippe was fifteen (1975). Edmund Burke was a teacher at Philippe’s secondary school – University College School in Hampstead. He was a Yorkshireman, and taught economics and politics to Philippe’s GCE class. Keen to show the Londoners what conditions were like in the north, “he decided that we really needed to learn about life and he took the school bus and took the entire class up to Yorkshire and made us go…down a coal mine. I have a vivid memory of it, a sense of shock about how other people lived, the conditions of work and so on…So that was, I think, politically very important.” [Q3].

Two further school teachers who had a strong influence on the young Philippe were Mr Lund, his English teacher, who was “mad keen on jazz”, Mr Couper, and Mr Impey who taught him French, and with whom he “bonded”.

Consequently, at this early stage of his life, Philippe Sands had a sense of injustice and hardship for what he would have looked upon as poor people instilled into him, as well as a love of music, and from the readings in his English classes, a love of poetry (through John Clare ¹²), radical Romantic writing (William Blake ¹³), and political commentary (George Orwell ¹⁴).

Along with his exposure to Mr Burke’s ideas on economics and politics, it is easy to see why Philippe Sands, when he eventually decided to try for a place at university as he approached his eighteenth year and GCE A-Levels, should have initially favoured subjects such as economics and literature. It seems he had never been seriously exposed to subjects such as science and technology at school: perhaps none of the teachers at UCS were inspirational. In later life, it is instructional that in cases and arbitrations involving geography, and environmental issues (such as the 1997 Gabčíkovo ICJ case), Philippe expressed great interest in such matters (as did James Crawford ¹⁵), so his interests were not unsusceptible to matters involving science and technology, as some of his texts, notably those on environmental law, show. As I have said – a man of many parts.

Undergraduate and Post-Graduate Studies: Cambridge (1979-83)

LLB

Philippe Sands went to university in 1979, and his initial choice had been Bristol, but he failed to gain entry, so he stayed on at University College School for what he called a “seventh term”, and took the entrance exam for Corpus Christi College at Cambridge.

The reason for his choice of Corpus was pure contingency. “My dad had a patient called … Anthony Carlyle, and he said “Oh I was at Corpus, lovely place, he should apply to Corpus.” We were a family that had no contacts.” Philippe applied to read economics, and he “was sort of astonished to get into Corpus.” [Q5].

Once he arrived at Corpus, however, several things struck him as both odd, and from an academic point of view, unfortunate. The result was that after the end of the first term Philippe switched from Economics to Law. I let his own words tell the story: “The first days in Corpus were memorable…an all-boys college. Can you believe it? .... It’s sort of pretty weird looking back as to how things are now.” [Q5]. On the other hand, both his primary school and secondary schools had been “all-boys”, so Philippe found Cambridge to be far less progressive than perhaps he had been expecting.

Also, and from a career aspect, more fundamental “Corpus didn’t have a tutor in Economics, so we were farmed out to a very impressive character called Mr Kuczynski ¹⁶ at Pembroke. But the thing about Economics at Cambridge was it seemed like we’d had a better teacher at school, so I changed after about six weeks to Law…[because] I didn’t think I was going to enjoy the economics class…and was allowed to do that for some reason. I think it’s very difficult to do that now.” [Q5]

Even this was not a smooth transition. There were about ten Law undergraduates at Corpus, but “Corpus really wasn’t a law college” [Q6], and despite having “a couple of very nice Directors of Studies…who treated us very respectfully” (he singled out Mark Owen ¹⁷ in this regard), Philippe did not flourish, scraping a 2:2 in his first year, with a third in Land Law. This was the basis of his long-held view that “my position has been that Law should not be taught as an undergraduate course because you’re just not ready for it. You need to know about life to be able to do Law. So, I’m quite partial to the Canadian, American, Australian way of doing Law as a graduate course.” [Q56].

Despite this, Philippe’s enthusiasm for, and appreciation of the niceties of Law improved with the passage of time: a 2:1 in his second year, and a very high 2:1 in this third year – “a sort of gradual progression.” He puts this down to what he called a “game changer”, when he fell under the spell of his second talismanic Yorkshireman, a certain Robbie Jennings ¹⁸ at the beginning of his second year in Michaelmas Term, October 1980 when he began his exploration of International Law. Jennings fired up Sands’s legal imagination and enthusiasm. As he put it: “I loved it, I’ve still got my notes from it and…all of a sudden international law came along, and wow, that is what I love, and it has to be of the issues: war and peace and conflict and disputes, and resolutions and international courts…” [Q6].

It also struck a very deep personal chord because “the two languages of international law were always seen as English and French, [and this] meant they were very, very attractive to me.” [Q6]. Because of his mother’s and grandfather’s heritage, international law spoke to Philippe Sands as no other aspect of Law had done so far done. He had found his intellectual home.

This legal intellectual damascene awakening coincided with another significant event in his life: he fell in love. The girl in question was a Marshall Scholar who was “doing a double degree from Harvard and MIT…in medicine and neuroscience”: Anya Hurlbert ¹⁹. The combination was “very significant because all of a sudden I was elevated in the eyes of someone whom I thought was an extremely intellectually and culturally significant person .”

The confidence generated by these two events were symbiotic, and combined to expand his horizons exponentially at a social level, from run of the mill to “something that [was] sort of more interesting”. For Philippe this was “incredibly, incredibly important” and resulted in his becoming involved in theatre and directing plays, and suddenly being “exposed to people who were not in the Law Department”, but were into “literature, philosophy, or history, and who were actors and musicians and more culturally inclined.” [Q6].

In other words, in his second year, Philippe’s world began to resemble that which he had first hoped life outside suburban Belsize Park would be; one which some of his literary heroes would have populated. Law wasn’t so boring after all! He could have both now that Robbie Jennings had unleashed the attractiveness of international law onto his enquiring and innovative mind.

Before we left Philippe’s reminiscences of his LLB year, he recalled someone who was the first interviewee in the Eminent Scholars Archive, Professor Kurt Lipsten ²⁰. Philippe remembers Kurt and his wife Gwyneth ²¹, and Kurt’s colleague Basil Markesinis ²² who also taught Philippe comparative law. Philippe took a half paper in Markesinis’s class.

LLM

Philippe’s undergraduate course at Corpus lasted from 1979-1982, at the end of which he achieved a very high 2:1 in his third year. This prompted “someone [to say] “Why don’t you stay on and do the LLM?” [Q7]. He successfully applied to his local education authority, which was Camden Council, for a scholarship, was awarded one, and for which he is “eternally grateful”, and in Autumn 1982 he sallied forth on the LLM course. This consisted of four parts, all of which were International Law classes: law of peace, law of war, law of international institutions, “and maybe law of the sea or something like that – I can’t remember what the fourth one was.”… “As far as I can remember, we didn’t have to do an LLM paper.” [Q12].

During his LLM year, Philippe took classes with several of the eminent scholars whom I have interviewed for this oral history archive, and it is worth emphasising his observations that will add to their tributes, These were Eli Lauterpacht ²³, Chris Greenwood ²⁴, Philip Allott ²⁵, and Derek Bowett ²⁶. For Philippe Sands, this was “a whole new cast of teachers who have stood me in the most fantastic stead….I don’t necessarily have the same views as them on all sorts of issues, but they were an absolutely marvellous bunch of teachers…and I loved that, being with so many different teachers.” [Q7]

Philip Allott was the international law teacher with whom Philippe Sands had most in common. “I didn’t realise it at the time, but [with the benefit of hindsight]…I’ve come to understand that [the teacher] who was most important was Philip, and I think that the reason for this was that [he was] the only who made us really think “Why is it like this? How could it be different? What is its purpose?” [Q8].

Allott’s consummate skill was his form of engagement. “He would invite LLM students to his rooms…above the main tower in Trinity and we’d have evenings with him drinking a glass of wine…and would talk about [a subject] in a different way. He would challenge us, he would criticise us…and he is the one who made me open my mind and my vistas and imagine international law in a different way.” [Q8].

It is not coincidental that Philip Allott took to writing texts in a quasi-parable-like, poetic format, most famously in his book Eunomia: New Order for a New World (1990, OUP) ²⁷, and this technique is one that Philippe Sands has adapted in his own inimical, riveting and detective-like style when writing on human rights issues in his more popular, general books that address fundamental legal issues. Allott’s long-term influence on Sands is there for all to see, and when I asked Philippe to reflect on this, he said “Yes…I wasn’t purposely mirroring or following Philip, but we’ve talked about it subsequently, and we’ve taken, in a sense, a similar road, a recognition that the community of which we are members is significant and respected, but it’s not enough…[you have to talk to the outside world].” [Q100].

Christopher Greenwood was 27 years old when he taught Philippe in 1982 (only 5 years older), so “Chris Greenwood was very young at the time, a marvellous teacher, deeply conservative, but what I always so admired was his openness to other ideas. I remember debates…on nuclear weapons…it had come to be an issue before the International Court, and he was sort of in favour of them and sort of in favour of the great powers, and some of us in the class would go at him hammer and tongs and we disagreed, but that didn’t stop him giving us a first class pass…” [Q8].

Philippe summed up his LLM year, which made him. “…it was a really important year…a wonderful year, and I look back on it, as you can tell, just with warmth and incredible fondness. It was the making of the path that I would take…with great colleagues…some of whom I’m still in touch with.” [Q8]. He also recalled that the International Law classes were taught in the Lauterpacht Room, which was on the ground floor of the Cockerell Building in the Old Schools in the centre of town (the Faculty moved to the new, West Road site, only in 1995. This room had been established in honour of Hersch Lauterpacht). The significance of this to his later life was, at the time lost on the 22 year old Philippe “We had no idea who this guy Lauterpacht was…”, he was just Eli Lauterpacht’s father, “…ironically given what came later in my life…just thinking he was some old famous dead international lawyer, no idea he had been involved in Nuremburg, no idea he was a founder of modern human rights.”

“I look back on that period and just think, wow, maybe someone didn’t do a very good job about letting us know who we were in the presence of…we never thought about these things…we were surrounded by forces and ideas that must have been very significant and then which infused our thinking and our being. Yes, it was a really important period.” [Q10].

It is clear from his musing in our interview, and the way he expressed his feelings, that Philippe Sands is a man who lives his law – absorbs his visions from his surroundings, even if retrospectively: a lawyer and evocative writer interwoven in a rare combination, reminiscent of Philip Allott.

Finally, another observation from the LLM year, was that Philippe recognised that international law at Cambridge at that time revolved around a core group with Eli Lauterpacht at its heart. Clive Parry ²⁸, another international lawyer was not in this circle, and the LLM class had little to do with him. Similarly, Philippe says that “we all picked up on the tension between Professor Bowett and Mr Lauterpacht. We would have no idea what that tension was about. [but] with the benefit of hindsight …I’ve come to understand [it] may have been about …Professor Bowett [being] the successor to Professor Jennings ²⁹. In the event, Eli was only awarded an Honorary Professorship in 1994, a decade later.

He remembers Eli’s affinity with students, which was one of his outstanding characteristics: “After the LLM [ceremony]…there was a garden party [at Eli’s house in Herschel Road]…much later looking back [I realised] that at that garden party was his mother Rachel ³⁰ whom I only met to say hello, didn’t realise who she was. It’s a great sadness that I never got a chance to talk to her about her husband and their life, given that I wrote about them later.”

This link to Eli and his mother made Philippe feel close to Eli for family reasons. Professor Sands mused whether his grandfather Leon had ever met Hersch and Rachel, given their mutual connection to the cities of Lemberg and Vienna. Philippe likes to think they did, in Eli’s garden after he graduated from the LLM, but whatever the case: “I love the idea that there was this coming together of people from different parts of the world today who have these points of commonality so many years ago.” Philippe sensed “a warmth towards Eli, and given what came later he must have picked up on me somehow, but I wasn’t aware of that [at the time].” Philippe was talking to me in his “Romantic writer” mode, which is never far from the surface.

Harvard (1982-83)

Once his LLM was achieved, with a First-Class pass, Philippe Sands was “at a loose end.” He had unsuccessfully applied for articles at the London law firm Coward Chance ³¹, and when his girlfriend Anya Hurlbert’s Marshall Scholarship came to an end, she decided to go back to the States to continue her neuroscience research at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) MD-PhD programme, splitting her time between Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston. She suggested that Philippe go with her: “Well, you know, we’re together, why don’t you come with me?”. What did he have to lose? and agreed. He recalled “Yes, let’s go off to America for a year.” So, when I asked Professor Sands why he went to the USA in 1983, he merely replied “Love”. [Q14]

Pretending to his parents that he had some fixed plan – “I sort of told porky pies to my parents” – he set off with only £10 in his pocket, but importantly, he did have a place to live. Once in the USA, they headed for Boston where Anya had an apartment at 1645 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, which was “right opposite the [Harvard] Law School.”

It was August – the academic summer vacation period, and Philippe’s first priority was to find a source of income. Despite not knowing anyone at the Law School, he “wandered into…Langdell Hall, and started to look for anyone there who taught international law who might need a research assistant or someone to do their footnotes or something.” [Q14]. Fate smiled on Philippe and he met a newly-appointed assistant lecturer (assistant professor) by the name of David Kennedy ³², who luckily did require “someone with a sort of classical training in international law,” and he agreed to hire Philippe at $6 or $8 an hour “ten hours a week to do my footnotes” for something he was writing.

This gave Philippe a small income (which he supplemented by working at the Bank of Boston as a paralegal for a further $15 an hour), but far more importantly it gave him a backdoor entrance into the Harvard Faculty, and when Kennedy suggested that “since you’re here, why don’t I try to enrol you as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School?” Philippe applied and with Kennedy’s backing was accepted. For Sands, this was a huge break through because “I could go to all the classes…meet teachers, meet LLM students, meet JD students and be part of …and be integrated into the community.” [Q14]

Philippe thus gained entry into the Harvard Law School fraternity by a somewhat obscure route, but his year there turned out to be momentous for his career for two main reasons. As he put it, he spent what he called an “incredible year at Harvard.”

Firstly, it opened his eyes to how another institution taught international law under vastly different circumstances to the formal, traditional, collegiate offering that Cambridge UK presented to its students. Hersch Lauterpacht had made Cambridge the then global centre, or standard bearer for International Law, but Philippe saw that at Harvard other strands and pathways were being explored and forged that would ultimately eat away at Cambridge UK’s hegemony. As Professor Sands remembered his experiences to me: “…unlike Cambridge [at Harvard] different kinds of people were teaching. Women were teaching, I don’t think we had a female lecturer. Black people were teaching, and black people were teaching international law…gosh, I didn’t know black people taught international law….I sat in a class with Clyde Ferguson ³³…who had been active in the civil rights movement…and this coincided with a huge debate…at the Harvard Law School on the subject of Critical Legal Studies , a sort of new theoretical way at looking at law, including international law, and this was very strange for me coming from classical…Cambridge.” [Q14]

The stark distinction that struck Philippe so forcefully was that his own upbringing at Cambridge in the late 70s – early 80s had taught him that “law and politics were totally separate [but] in Harvard in 83-84, law and politics were completely intermingled.” [Q14]. Scales fell from Philippe Sands’s eyes. He could never view international law in the same light again. This is a strong theme that runs through all his legal and popular writings.

His first publication

This brings us to the second momentous event, which cemented the previous revelation about law and politics into his thinking as the two occurred simultaneously in the first few weeks at the beginning of the new academic year 1983-84.

Philippe had arrived in Harvard in August, and only a few weeks later, on 1st September, a Russian Su-15 jet fighter shot down a South Korean Boeing 747 commercial airliner, flight KAL007 enroute from Anchorage to Seoul, at night, off Moneron Island, just west of Sakhalin Island over the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers, including a US Congressman Larry McDonald ³⁴, were killed.

Philippe Sands put pen to paper and wrote a short article, which was published in November, only two months after the incident, in the Harvard International Review, a student-produced journal ³⁵. “It’s the first piece I’d ever written and I still have a copy of it…” [Q15]. “I [am] struck by how much the tone actually was similar to my writing now…” [Q58].

I commented that this showed that Philippe Sands had gotten into his stride at the very beginning of his publishing career, and that he has remained steadfast for over 40 years, particularly so since his conclusions in 1983 were mature and considered.

Typically, he claimed that his views were bound to have been picked up from his teachers at Cambridge, singling out Philip Allott, John Baker ³⁶, Eli Lauterpacht, Chris Greenwood and Derek Bowett. “Putting it another way, it would be a great surprise to me if at that stage in my career and at the age of 23 I had well-formed views of my own.” [Q60]. “What I essentially wanted to do was to engage in the debate on the legalities of what had happened to explore the circumstances in which one country might take such action if it believed that a civilian aircraft was entering its airspace or engaged in other activity in ways that raised legal questions.” [Q58].

Apropos the KAL007 incident itself, I put it to him that the ICJ had earlier declined to rule on a similar incident in 1955 ³⁷ on a technicality and that such issues involved a high degree of political consideration. This was in the case of Israel v Bulgaria and how it compared to the KAL007 situation. Philippe agreed “…it was very political…remember in August 1983 it was…in the midst of the Cold War, and in that sense the piece [the Harv. Int. Rev. article] is a reflection that I am a child of the Cold War and that I had sort of imbued the values that had been introduced to me by my teachers in Cambridge University. So my analysis…would have been that prima facie this is unlawful, it’s a wrongful act and it’s the Soviets getting up to no good. But I …did try to make it as balanced as I could. We don’t know the facts, let’s try to ascertain what are the gaps and what we need to know, and that I think is consistent with what has followed, which is [that] issues of international law are not purely legal. The facts are incredibly important and I’m always, and I was already at 23 it seems, very interested in making sure I was on top of the facts before I express any views.” [Q59]. I have highlighted a statement that he probably would not have written had he not been already exposed to, what for him, were unconventional views apropos law and politics at Harvard as he composed his inaugural short note that marked the beginning of a long and illustrious publishing journey.

I also asked Philippe how life at Harvard compared to the collegiate system he had already experienced (and would experience again) at Cambridge, citing an interview I had had with Judge Stephen Schwebel ³⁸ in 2009, who had visited Hersch Lauterpacht and Cambridge in the early 1950s, and who had been enchanted with the college system. Philippe replied that he had found that there is a collegiality in both systems. “What I always loved about Cambridge was that you met people from different disciplines and activities [in your college]. I don’t like ghettos, and a law school is a ghetto, whether it’s Cambridge, whether it’s Harvard, whether it’s UCL or anywhere else…you would go and have a meal and you could find yourself sitting next to a French literature person or a historian or a marine biologist or a mathematician …. I miss that a lot. That’s one aspect of my life [now] that is not as fulfilled as it might be.” [Q17]. So far, so like Schwebel. But he continued “… there is collegiality with the law school, but it’s a different type…it’s slightly competitive collegiality because you’re not competing with people from other disciplines…but within your own discipline…” [Q17]. I found it interesting to see that Philippe Sands found “competing” as a factor in both, whereas Schwebel, who himself had been at Harvard, did not treat the Cambridge experience at Trinity as an exercise in competition, but in non-academic trivia [see his answer in Q6 in the ESA].

Philippe Sands was potentially faced with a tricky decision as to what to do when the Harvard term ended in mid-May 1984. Did he stay in the States?

But fate intervened. “In the Spring of 1984 ³⁹, totally out of the blue, by then we were living above the Grolier Poetry Bookshop… on Plympton Street, next to the Harvard Bookshop, a letter arrived from Eli Lauterpacht…I remember that it was typed and there was a pale blue envelope and pale blue, Eli’s sort of very authoritative notepaper, and it said he was setting up a centre for international law at Cambridge [and] did I want to apply for a position as a research fellow? He had a little bit of funding… I don’t know why he wrote to me. I don’t know how he got my address.” [Q14]

Clearly, this would put a strain in his relationship with Anya, who was intent on continuing her medical studies at Harvard-MIT Health Services. “We talked about it, what I should do…Anya was very encouraging…whatever the motive of the encouragement was I don’t know, but she was very positive encouraging, so I did apply and then was very surprised to be honest to get a response from Eli – “You’re hired…£1000 a quarter…plus rooms at St Catharine’s and food…I was very happy.” [Q18].

Thus, Philippe’s short Harvard adventure came to a close, although it is clear that its influence on his way of legal thinking and philosophy have endured ever since. His view of international law and what it represented had been altered in the year he spent in America. Harvard had made an indelible impression upon him, and several of the friends that he made while there “are amongst my closest friends today.” [Q17]

He returned to England in the Autumn of 1984, and his “relationship with Anya…ended in 1985.” [Q18].

Fellowship: Lauterpacht Centre and St Catharine's College (1984-1988)

This relatively short interlude also wrought profound changes on the fortunes and outlook of Philippe Sands, and set him on a stellar trajectory of legal writing.

He installed himself at St Catharine’s in “rooms on B staircase”, and because he was now as a Research Fellow “I could now walk on the grass…it was a lovely college. Of course there were some marvellous people there, including John Baker…he would sometimes invite me to lunch” [Q18] or sit with him at High Table. The significance here is that Baker was a legal historian who was particularly knowledgeable on mediaeval law.

The Lauterpacht Centre, was established with the help of Professors Clive Parry, Robbie Jennings, and Derek Bowett by Eli in memory of his father Hersch in 1983, and in its first years it had no physical home, operating out of the Cockerell Building and Eli’s study at his home in Herschel Road. By the time Philippe Sands arrived to become its inaugural Fellow at the beginning of the 1984-85 academic year, Eli, through the generosity of a private benefactor ⁴⁰ and Trinity College had acquired 5 Cranmer Road which became the Centre’s physical home (coincidently it lies directly opposite his late father’s property) ⁴¹.

Philippe’s role was to undertake research on State Contracts, one of Eli’s interests in which he was to investigate “disputes between foreign investors and host states…a project that was never completed.” [Q18]. This was a topic he would discuss with John Baker who would relate anecdotes to Philippe about how similar problems in the 15th century would take centuries to sort out. Philippe said that these conversations showed him that the “law develops over time…these things don’t happen in an instant...” [Q18]

For him, this was salutary advice, and informed him how to think about international law, “…and keep me more optimistic...[than otherwise he might be].” [Q18]. This is a further theme that runs through Philippe’s way of approaching international law: it is political, it has a narrative or story, it is personal, and it evolves: often Philippe’s assessment seems overly optimistic – but he believes that with time knotty problems will resolve themselves – almost a Darwinian “evolution through modification” notion. His conversations with John Baker at St Catharine’s had a strong influence upon him.

Because of Eli’s busy international schedule, he was frequently away from Cranmer Road, and he airily offloaded his lectures onto Philippe. This seemed a daunting task, and “I found myself at the age of twenty four teaching on the Law of International Organisation with students who were much older than me and who knew more about the world than me. It was terrifying…” [Q18], but he rose to the occasion and soon he felt he was a junior partner to his own old teachers. Being thrown in at the deep end was just what Philippe needed, if he did not know it, to lift him rapidly up the academic ladder.

Early in his time at the Lauterpacht Centre, Philippe studied for his Bar exams, and was called to the Bar in 1985. He was sponsored by Eleanor Sharpstone ⁴² via the Middle Temple, and he drove back and forth to London doing his course and attending the dinners in what he remembers as “…probably still is, my favourite car…a Peugeot 205 black GTI [which was so easy to park]…” [Q22]

A rapid rise in maturity and self-confidence was manifest in Sands’s next serious venture into print, and upon which I questioned him. This was the complex issue of the Tin Council litigation.

The International Tin Council was a London-based international organisation comprising twenty three sovereign states and the European Economic Community (EEC). Its objective was to manage a global "buffer stock" of tin to keep prices artificially stable. Unstable market conditions resulted in October 1985, in the ITC running out of money and its suspended trading. This left £900 million in debt to banks, metal brokers, and members of the London Metal Exchange, resulting in many lawsuits from creditors in English courts. The central issues were: Can sovereign member states be liable for the unpaid commercial debts of an international organisation they created? And can English courts wind up or appoint a receiver over an international body created by an international treaty?

When I asked Philippe Sands about the perceptive lengthy article he had written on this matter, in which he looked at the three cases that had already been decided around 1987 ⁴³ he said “…the Tin Council article would have been a reaction to the sense that I needed to publish in order to develop an academic career and the Tin Council litigation,…was big in the British context. “…that article was a subject I was very interested in, it was about immunity of an international organisation before the jurisdiction of the English courts, and that was the international law issue.” And the reading he did for it was relevant to lectures he was giving with Eli and Derek Bowett to the LLM class. It was an important exercise because “I didn’t fully understand [immunity] at the time…there is something in my persona…that found it bothersome that an entity or person because of status alone should be entitled to immunity before a national court and this offended my sense that the law needed to be applied to all and sundry…So the idea that an international organisation should have some sort of immunity from the jurisdiction of the national courts…needed to be justified and explained.” [Q64].

He applied this logic to persons with whom he was interested in his books written nearly 30 years later: “Equally I understand that for an international person…the idea that a national court would interfere with its exercise of decision making…would be necessary in certain circumstances, but how this was done…would be very important to me. In other words, immunity should be an exceptional thing and not the norm.” [Q64]

Philippe Sands clearly saw strands of legal logic in the Tin Council cases that run through many avenues of international law, not least human rights law.

His first book

On April 26th 1986 contingency struck once more and this time it completely diverted Philippe Sands’s attention and career onto a path that led to international recognition as one of the foremost thinkers in international law of his generation. And for this Philippe had to thank Soviet nuclear engineers who built a flaw into reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl power station which blew up with tragic consequences for those living near it in Ukraine and many others across northwestern Europe who were affected by the nuclear fallout. It spewed the radioactive isotopes Cesium137 and Iodine131 far and wide.

It was immediately seen as a major legal transboundary pollution issue and Philippe was invited to a hastily-convened conference in Washington in October 1986 to consider the matter and to present his opinions, on a subject in which no-one was well-versed. “I remember having a conversation with Eli saying “I don’t know anything about it”. He said “Nobody does, so gen up and you’ll be an expert in no time” That was Eli’s entrepreneurial spirit at play, and so I did it.” [Q22].

Philippe prepared a paper for the conference which was organised by the Annenberg Washington Program ⁴⁴. The conference was called “Global Disasters and International Information Flows”, and his paper was “The Chernobyl Accident and Public International Law”. He looked at whether International Law requires states to prevent such accidents and to minimise and repair damage when accidents do occur. Philippe noted that there existed no multilateral treaty requiring the provision of prompt and detailed information, either for general air-carried pollution or specifically for radio-active materials.

His paper was well-received, so that the Annenberg Program urged Philippe to incorporate his paper into a book, along with relevant documents, which Eli’s new publishing company – Grotius Press – agreed to publish with a subsidy from the Annenberg Program. The book was called “Chernobyl: Law and Communication” ⁴⁵ and it appeared in 1988. Philippe’s paper formed the Introductory Chapter, Eli wrote the Introductory Note, and the Forward was by Newton N Minow who was the Director of the Annenberg Washington Program. The rest of the volume was a collection of relevant texts of treaties.

Philippe was rather dismissive of the book’s content - “it’s basically a sort of noddy 50-page essay and then a whole load of documents, which Eli thought was terrific. It must have sold 12 copies, but I was thrilled…because it was my first book.” [Q23]

Nevertheless, he does recognise the book’s significance for his career. “…the book would be very, very significant because it would come to the attention of non-governmental organisations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace who would say “…you’re an expert on transboundary air pollution, would you come and help us on this, that, or the other project, so my first briefs as a barrister were on environmental issues.” [Q22]

This of course was the beginning of Philippe Sands’s entry into a new world of environmental law, where he made his name synonymous with “The Expert” on the topic: one of the first international lawyers to see how to integrate the disparate strands of legislation that already existed. That was for the future, but Chernobyl sowed those seeds.

As for the legal issues thrown up by the nuclear disaster, he concluded p.47 that “the legal issues are clear enough, but it is the resolutions that are the problem.” Despite the USSR’s failure to comply with many of the requirements of the subsequent Vienna Convention Treaty on “Early Notification of Nuclear Accidents” which came into force in January 1987, Philippe still believed “that does not mean that international law has been ineffective” p. 48. Referring back to what I have noted above and what I called his Darwinian “evolution through modification” perception for the development of international law, perhaps the long-term approach may yet work out for authoritarian states. It is not only Darwinian, but perceptive optimism.

By having to be cognizant of harm to neighbouring states by actions in their own countries, a loss of sovereignty was implicit in the new dispensation ushered in by the ramifications of the Chernobyl accident that he addressed in his book, and I asked Philippe how this real politick had unfolded in the forty years since 1986.

“I have come to understand that it’s a book essentially about the limits of sovereignty…and was a harbinger of what would come on the bigger issues of ozone depletion climate change, transboundary pollution, hazardous wastes, and so on…[and] we see today that states still struggle with the idea that what they do or authorise…within their national boundaries should somehow be subjected to international attention or the exercise of jurisdiction of others…but there’s a much greater acceptance of it today than there was back in 1988.” [Q66]

I also asked him what he thought of the comments of two of the reviewers of his 1988 book – Moshe Hirsch ⁴⁶ and Stephen McCaffrey ⁴⁷ who both commented on the larger picture upon which his booked touched – environmental law. Philippe’s answer showed that even at this stage he was well aware that there would soon be bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

“…one of the things that I have always been interested in is trying to see the bigger picture. I’ve never been much interested in the minutiae of legal technicalities in relation to a particular issue or challenge…What I [was] interested in was what the consequences of the accident had for the nature of the international legal order and the essential point was that the boundaries are permeable in the natural world. The environment does not respect national boundaries. We are all in this together and so the idea of national sovereignty is, in a sense, an absurdity…” but he had to add a caveat to recognize the real politick “…I understand that there are some things that states do have the exclusive competence to regulate and decide upon,…[but] that’s going to be a pretty limited area.” [Q67] His legal vision tempered by political pragmatism.

Finally, for Philippe, the Chernobyl disaster and the book he wrote about it “changed my life, completely changed my life.” [Q23] and at a very personal level. Not only did it change the trajectory of his legal thinking, but also because he realised that he enjoyed writing and was good at it: “…I must have liked writing… I didn’t realise that I enjoyed writing and no-one had ever taught me how to write, but Chernobyl changed everything” [Q24] Thus the incident in April 1986 unleashed Philippe Sands’s talent for writing onto the legal world and also onto “ordinary folks”. For this, the world must be grateful.

So, from Chernobyl, “Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”⁴⁸

King's College London (1988-91): Lectureship

The year that Chernobyl: Law and Communication appeared (1988) was the same year that Philippe left the Lauterpacht Centre for pastures new. “Eli said “You know it’s time to move on…you need to move up to the next step, you need a lectureship.” [Q25]

Philippe applied for a lectureship at Cambridge but did not get it, and he commented wryly that one of the things he was “…very happy to talk about, and sort of quite proud of, is my list of historic failures in trying to get appointed at Cambridge. I think these things have to be talked about, and my competitor then is a good friend – Vaughan Lowe ⁴⁹ and I was runner up.” [Q25]

He also applied to King’s College London, and was successful, and moved back to London in October 1988. I asked him if his recently-out book “Chernobyl” had been a factor in his success: “I think it must have helped”. [Q25]. Professor Sands has remained London-based ever since – nearly forty years.

His three years at King’s was “a very happy time…teaching general international law courses and getting very involved in the collaborative LLM programme at London University, because at the time London had a sort of collaborative LLM in which King’s, Queen Mary, LSE, UCL, SOAS all taught a single LLM course. So, you were part of a much bigger community and actually a very vibrant community.” [Q25].

Philippe credited some of his success at King’s to the Dean, Ian Kennedy ⁵⁰, whom he said “brought me into King’s [and] encouraged me because…my profile was…already slightly different…I was a classically trained international lawyer, but was doing a lot of work with non-governmental organisations that some people thought were beyond the pale like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth – the World Wildlife Fund was more conservative, so that seemed to be OK.” [Q26]

While at King’s a significant new chapter opened in Philippe’s book of life marked “Career”, that had profound effects on his rise in legal and popular esteem. This was the spinoff from his Chernobyl book which was published more or less as he arrived in WC2R 2LS.

“…when the book came out, I was invited to a launch event…at the Annenberg Washington Program in DC. I went with my friend James Cameron, who’d been a student…[whom Philippe had taught] in the LLM at Cambridge…While we were in Washington, we met with a lawyer who was the Director of the Alaska office of the Sierra Club Legal Defence Fund ⁵¹. He said to us “Have you ever thought about international environmental law?” and our reaction was “There’s no such subject, it doesn’t exist”. [Q26] Zaelke’s reply was “Well, there should be…and he proposed pooling resources and creating an international centre that was the origins of the Centre for International Environmental Law [CIEL], which was founded in Washington and at King’s in ’89.” [Q26].

Philippe and James Cameron applied to the Ford Foundation for funds, and were surprised to be granted $250,000 with which they founded the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to provide legal assistance to such relatively poor states on environmental matters, “…and we negotiated the famous Framework Convention on Climate Change from 1989-90 to 1992 [and they also set up the Foundation for International Law and Development – FIELD ⁵², which was based at SOAS and which gave Philippe a foothold thereat.]” [Q26].

With this burst of activity, climate change and the concept of the legal status of environmental issues became a hot topic, and Philippe, no lover of Margaret Thatcher, praised a speech she gave on the matter in Geneva “… in September 1990 ⁵³…[I] was present in the room …an amazing speech…[I] remember that moment well…” [Q26].

This activity prompted Manchester University Press to approach Philippe and ask “Why don’t you do a book on international environmental law? There was no book at that point.” [Q26]

Although he was “…pipped at the post [to be] the first book by my good friends Pat Birnie ⁵⁴ and Alan Boyle ⁵⁵…” [Q26] ⁵⁶, and a “slender publication in French “by Alexandre Charles Kiss ⁵⁷ from the University of Strasbourg…” [Q68], Sands’s book was in a class of its own. It has become the gold standard, partly because of the impressive organisation and integration of disparate ideas and notions that have never been bettered. It appeared in 1994, by which time he was at SOAS, but it was at King’s that he did much of his initial thinking on the project. We shall look at the issues related to his famous book in the next section.

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) (1991-2002): Lecturer, Reader, Professor

Philippe Sands’s transfer from King’s to SOAS was complex and was bound up in the machinations of the two research centres he and James Cameron had established – CIEL and FIELD while he was at King’s. As he described it to me “…SOAS wanted the Centre for International Environmental Law…that was the crucial thing. Actually, what happened very early on, within a year and a half [i.e. by 1991] of setting up the Centre for International Environmental Law [at King’s], differences arose between the American side and the British side in terms of the style of doing things. We stayed friends, but we worked out we couldn’t work, so the two organisations split. CIEL remained in Washington, and London became the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development at SOAS.” [Q29].

Effectively, Philippe transferred from King’s to SOAS in 1991 to be Director of Studies of FIELD while Cameron acted as Director, and in 1992 Philippe was formally taken onto the staff and given the status of Lecturer at SOAS.

An important event occurred early in Philippe Sands’s SOAS tenure when the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) conference took place in Rio de Janeiro from 3rd to 14th June 1992. Philippe had begun writing his book on environmental law for Manchester University Press before the conference begun ⁵⁸ but it was there, in Rio, that he was inspired by being the champion of the AOSIS states to press on, as the reality of climate change and sea-level rise bore down upon them. The conference also resulted in historic international treaties, including the opening for signature of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as well as the adoption of the landmark global plan Agenda 21.

Environmental Law and Ecocide

His book Principles of International Environmental Law appeared to great acclaim in 1994, and he said to me that he feels his book was differently received to Birnie and Boyle’s “companion or competitor” [Q68] volume, because the contents reflected “a difference of our backgrounds and perceptions about how to order things…I was right at the beginning of a career as a barrister and so I suspect was more influenced and informed than Alan or Pat about practicalities. Their book ⁵⁹…is more academic in nature, whereas I was already jumping to the practicalities of environmental impact assessment, access to information, liability, transboundary harm, and I think that’s a reflection of the fact that I was schooled in a community around people like Eli Lauterpacht and Chris Greenwood that made you think very practically, how would the courts deal with these issues? How would a litigator deal with these issues? Rather than the theories of how one dealt with it….[because] I am a sort of practical pragmatic person” [Q68]

He also said that this pragmatism showed up in the what he called “a dig at Ian Brownlie ⁶⁰” who had omitted to mention the environment once in his own 1993 Principles of Public International Law because “I’m not dealing with the environment…until the ICJ has said there is such a thing as international environmental law.” [Q68]. Sands’s riposte to this attitude is “you don’t have to wait until the court has expressed a view…there is law here, you should have recognised it.” [Q68]

There have been four editions of Principles of International Environmental Law: 1st edition 1994, 2nd 2003, 3rd 2012, and 4th 2018, and in the second edition Sands said that his experience as a practitioner in the intervening eight years was brought to bear on the content - he was writing for an audience that needed practical solutions. His book came out in 1994, but obviously it had been in the writing since 1992. “By then [1994] I’d been involved in a number of negotiations, but I’d never really been involved in a case…and that changed in 1994 and 1995 when I became involved for the first time in cases at the International Court of Justice , the Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons, and then the Gabčíkovo -Nagymaros case….if you compare the first and second editions you’ll find…I’ve had the benefit of making arguments, addressing the arguments of the other side…[it] was very significantly influenced by the world of practice…because the judges are interested in a hard-nosed, practical approach. What’s the rule, What are the facts?....that mindset informed future editions…” [Q70] These comments get to the heart of why his book as been so well-received by the legal profession and NGOs - it is practical and full of commonsense.

It is significant that in all editions, Philippe Sands refers and pays homage to Philip Allott’s book Eunomia and I asked him about problems that Allott had identified: “Philip is far more engaged intellectually with matters of theory than I…because of his work as a Foreign Office lawyer, he’s also an intensely practical person and what I love about his work…is that he is articulating through bigger picture issues and identifying contradictions between positions…of what states might need and what they’re willing to do…” [Q71]

Sands saw that this leads on to a fundamental problem in the natural extension of his ideas on Environmental Law in the next crusade on which he is now (2026) working – the issue of Ecocide. The problem that Philip Allott identified was that “…something which might be an act of ecocide in one [highly industrialised] country, might not be an act of ecocide in another which is moving towards its sort of economic development goals…” [Q71].

We moved on to discuss this topic, even though it is a project he is conducting while at UCL, so I will include the conversation here. I asked him what practical legal protections would he like to see put in place to achieve some of the environmental goals set out in his book. “Well the norms are there, the principles are there but the political will isn’t…states are very wary of…say, phasing out fossil fuels completely…[which was one reason] I agreed to finally get involved in the efforts to criminalise ecocide…because in the toughest of times we need…to change consciousness and [that’s’] one of the things criminal law does…[but] I’m not starry-eyed about criminal law…if you adopt a convention…on genocide [for example] mass murder [doesn’t] suddenly stop….it’s going to take a lot more time....So I would like to see a fifth crime that basically puts the fear of God into individuals who believe that if they are involved in an act which causes massive harm to the climate system, they are personally at risk of investigation, indictment, prosecution, and conviction. Not because I think it’s somehow automatically and immediately going to change their behaviour, but because it changes consciousness and so I’d like to see a greater use, not of state responsibility, but individual criminal responsibility.” [Q74]

To this end, Professor Sands has now put pen to paper, and is in the final stages of finalising his ideas.

“I’m writing a book on ecocide now. It will be published in the European Spring of 2027….It’s a book about…international law, but it’s not a book for…international lawyers alone…it’s a book for the general public and it tells the story of how environment was introduced into the international legal order and my ideas for taking things further through the criminalisation of certain acts, taking the ideas of Polly Higgins ⁶¹ and those concerned with the environmental consequences of the Vietnam War into the modern era and proposing an amendment of the statute of the International Criminal Code.” [Q97].

He explained how his ideas on ecocide fitted into his grand scheme of things. “I fully recognised the decency and wellbeing of the efforts of people like Lauterpacht and Lemkin to protect humans by inventing concepts like crimes against humanity and genocide, which I talk about in my book East West Street. These are extraordinary contributions, but there is a gap. We have a legal order with four international crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, aggression, which are intended to protect the wellbeing of the human…[but] there is no international crime …to protect the wellbeing of nature as an end in itself, and I wish that gap to be filled. But it’s not my position that the gap should be filled over and above the other social objectives of protecting the wellbeing of individuals and groups from the terrible things we do to each other.” [Q105].

The Lawyer for the Natural World prepares to ride in tandem with the Peoples’ Lawyer.

I asked Philippe to comment on some of the many reviews that the first edition of Principles of International Environmental Law received [Q72]. Several of these touched on the sense expressed by many delegates that the Rio conference had placed too much emphasis on the anthropocentric nature of views towards environmental matter and how this had the potential to create something of a north-south tension regarding proposed regulations e.g. Glazewski ⁶², Bowman ⁶³, and McCracken ⁶⁴.

Philippe’s reply showed that he was acutely aware of the problem, and that his concern has now manifest itself in his latest venture to right these wrongs, viz, the promotion of the crime of ecocide, which I mentioned above. “I think that theme [was something about which] I became acutely conscious in the late 1990s, and the context was the introduction of environmental litigation before international human rights courts…I largely welcomed and largely celebrated it, but I had a concern…that by articulating environmental concern in the context of the promotion of human rights norms and values, you’re effectively casting a human gloss on the whole thing. You’re not saying the environment is an end in itself to be protected, you’re basically saying it is to be protected because if you fail to protect it, you undermine the wellbeing of the human and that theme has been with me for three decades….the four established international crimes…are all concerned with the wellbeing of the human…and the anthropocentric approach…has very evidently long bothered me…” [Q72]

I asked Philippe how in the thirty years since the publication of the 1st Edition, the linkages between environmental and other areas of international law have deepened and broadened. His answer underlined his Darwinian approach to international law; a slow evolutionary change. “…post-Chernobyl…the first blossoming…that one could call international environmental law…was given the stamp of approval by the International Court of Justice in 1996 was its advisory opinion on nuclear weapons – the environmental was [then] treated as a self-contained, distinct area…[and since then] the relationship between environmental protection and human rights…and foreign investment…has really deepened and you can see that most concretely in some of the cases which I’ve sat in on in investor-state arbitration. I’m thinking of cases like Eco Oro ⁶⁵ and Red Eagle ⁶⁶ in which panels have been increasingly willing to interpret and apply environmental norms in the context of…investment protections.” [Q73]. But it is a slow journey, with older, or more legally-conservative arbitrators sometimes reluctant to apply environmental norms, “…so there is still work to do, but you now begin to see increasingly the protection of the environment across the board of international legal issues and that is deepening and it is plainly continuing…” [Q73]. Thus spake the legal optimist.

But Professor Sands rounded off his answer, as we sat in his study in Hampstead, with a word of caution that emphasised the urgency of the matter, and the relevance of his famous book. “…we’re saying this on a day ⁶⁷ of a third consecutive heat wave in London…[there] are historically record temperatures…something is happening, and I think that’s going to mean that the environmental norms, climate change…will increasingly be integrated into the totality of the international legal order and that’s something I’m very strongly committed to.” [Q73]

His first professorship

Philippe Sands was given a chair in 1999. He was thirty-nine years old, and became Professor of International Law, and I asked him the circumstances of this award. His answer justified his deep involvement with his ongoing legal practice and how this elevated the standing of SOAS in the arena of progressive international law. “I think the rule then was you had to have two books. I had two books, but I was also bringing in research money and also I had this research centre [FIELD]…some people might have frowned upon the practice, but the practice was progressive and so people realised we weren’t practicing to make money, we were practicing to contribute to the progressive development of international law. Everything we did was about issues that people cared about.” [Q31]

“My very first case was an Advisory Opinion in 1996 on the legality of nuclear weapons…[on behalf of] four Pacific states – Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Solomon Islands, and Samoa…this was the first time the…[ICJ]…recognised legal obligations in relation to the protection of the environment….And then there was the ’98 Pinochet case…and [in the same year] I negotiated the statute of the International Criminal Court…” [Q31]

He, and his colleagues saw these developments as “…not all classical legal activity, but it’s [being] really significant in terms of the development of international law and broadening the base of actors in the world of international law…I think if I hadn’t done [this work], I wouldn’t have got a chair.” [Q31]

Natalia Schriffin

On 5th June 1993, Philippe married Natalia Schriffin ⁶⁸, whom he had met in 1989, in New York. Through her he was “introduced to the world of literature” [Q28]. And for a man who had only recently realised that he loved writing (through his 1988 Chernobyl book), his introduction to Natalia in March 1989 (while he was still at King’s College) was a momentous occasion.

This was because Natalia’s father André ⁶⁹ was the managing director of Pantheon Books in New York, and whenever he went to see her at the family home “…there’d always be interesting writers, famous writers, who were expressing interest in international law issues…and so [I needed] to up [my] game around these people…and you would be challenged intellectually,…politically…and professionally…” [Q28] New horizons opened up in “…this new community that I found myself in [with people who were] very interested in international law, they weren’t bored by it, it wasn’t a turn-off to say you dealt with these kinds of issues on the environment or war or peace or human rights or trade disputes.” [Q28].

To me, the interviewer, it seemed that for Philippe this relationship appeared to have an element of pre-destination to it – a coming together of two parallel personal dimensions: it was as Philippe put it “…the convergence of human factors that cause one person, me, to take the direction that I had. A lot of it it’s accidental. It’s not that I had a moment and said “this is what I am going to do”, I’m on a path. Things come along, they divert you and then there’s another diversion…and you end up where you are. Crazy story.” [Q28]. Destiny and contingency are complex forces that defy explanation.

For Philippe, this bond has brought great strength to his endeavours – “[Natalia] is the first reader of everything that I write. She’s an extraordinary editor, and extraordinary reader…” [Q28] Commenting on his new book on ecocide, he said “Very few people have seen it. One who has is my wife, who expresses concern at how much I seem to have placed myself at the centre of the narrative…so I’m struggling right now, as we speak, to how I write about these things in a way that tells an honest story without seeking to big myself up…” [Q97].

Natalia’s role in his post-1993 life was crucial: “I think the most important thing that I’ve done is bring issues of international law to a broader audience. I think the person who has been most responsible for that is Natalia, my wife, because of the advice that she has given…” [Q53]

It was interesting to learn how their original meeting came about, and his account showed how Philippe’s original sortie to America, with Anya in 1982, had inadvertently opened doors for him. He became friendly with Cynthia Lichtenstein ⁷⁰ from the Boston Law College, and he would go over to the States to teach yearly courses at her university in the mid-late 1980s. At around the time he came to know Cynthia his brother introduced him to Julia Hobsbawn ⁷¹ in London, whose historian father Eric published material via Pantheon Press, which was run by André Schriffin. This convoluted pathway led Julia to introduce Philippe to Natalia. They “hit it off and started a relationship,” [Q28] because they had a common interest: Natalia was “working in juvenile justice and qualifying as a lawyer” [Q28]. The rest is history…

Manual on International Courts and Tribunals, 1999

Philippe Sands’s last years at SOAS saw him embark on a new tack that initially was spawned by, then ran parallel to but slowly diverged from his environmental interests. It culminated in another of his well-known books Manual on International Courts and Tribunals (1999) ⁷².

“I was with the Centre for International Environmental Law working on climate change until ’94, ’95. I then started getting involved in cases before the [ICJ] and in international criminal law (Yugoslavia and Rwanda), so my interest in international law began to move beyond the environment and in particular into the ICJ, International Criminal Tribunals and then…the ICC. That informed [me] what I wanted to write about and what I observed was that ghettos had formed.” [Q77].

With the rise of numerous specialised courts, Philippe saw that “people were very specialised in one court and as I got involved …I came to see that there were points of commonality and I became interested in the idea of a sort of common law of international courts, the ways in which there were common principles across the practice of different courts and tribunals…” [Q77]

This led Philippe with colleagues Cesare Romano ⁷³ and Ruth Mackenzie ⁷⁴ “…to write a book…on a comparative approach…the manual, to make clearer the points of connection between different courts and tribunals.” [Q77]. Their aim was “to find the points of commonality and points of difference.” So, they set up the Centre for Law Policy on International Courts and Tribunals, and the Project on International Courts and Tribunals ⁷⁵, “to identify points of commonality and to strengthen the system…[of what was] a motley collection of courts and tribunals around the globe, none of which seemed to connect.” [Q77]

This collection of unconnected courts was what Philippe had once referred to as a galaxy of a thousand points of lights, and when I reminded him of this, he said that “working with Cesare and Ruth was a useful thing to do because it would strengthen…the individual courts and tribunals….and create a greater cross-fertilisation in their practice.” [Q78] They hoped to do this linking of the points of light by “bringing the registrars and…judges together.” [Q79].

In the Introduction to this book, Philippe set out the rationale for the book (p. xxv-xxvi) as “In the intervening century (since the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1899), an almost bewildering array of international courts, tribunals and other adjudicatory bodies have been established providing for the pursuit of international claims”, and “few academics and practitioners are informed about the range of international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies now available”. This book was written to provide a handbook to summarise what was available.

A second edition was brought out in 2010 by OUP (by which time Philippe was at UCL), authored by Mackenzie, Romano, Shany, and Sands, which was 58% larger (with 547pp)

One of the reviewers of the Manual, James Harrison ⁷⁶ from Edinburgh, said that a theme that runs through both editions, is its emphasis on the lack of transparency of various courts, and I asked Philippe what he thought about Harrison’s suggestion that some litigants were drawn to certain courts because they did lack transparency. Professor Sands admitted that although “…the trend is towards more transparency…[he could] remember being really bothered by the fact that [at] the International Court of Justice…you didn’t have to be a member of the Bar to be able to plead. Anyone can turn up, and that has practical consequences. [You could be] pleading with or against someone who has no rules of professional conduct…and [you may get sent] internal documents from the court that you should not get sent…” [Q83].

Similarly, there were no rules at the ICJ so that “…if someone misbehaves where do you go? Who do you complain to if someone is violating ethical rules…so the lack of procedural mechanisms…really bothered me…I think anyone who pleads [before the ICJ] needs to be subject to clear rules.” [Q83]

In contrast, the ICC has such rules, and Philippe said that in his book the emphasis on transparency “was to make it clear [that] they should have such rules.” [Q83].

Lack of transparency in this “motley collection of courts and tribunals around the globe” wasn’t the only defect that Professor Sands identified and tried to point out in his book, and probably a more serious problem was the whole question of the appointment of judges to these courts, which was ad hoc, because there had been no global consideration of a “truly international bar.” In fact, this problem was/is so serious that it fuelled Philippe’s determination to compile another book. But more of this major project anon.

I asked him about the issues that had been raised on the question of judges in his Manual. “I was long shocked about the way in which candidates were selected, nominated, put forward, voted on. It was appalling. I mean, judges have a important role and in very large part the legitimacy of the exercise of their function is connected to the legitimacy of the appointments process…” [Q84].

The rationale for this book was that the increasing number of disadvantaged and developing countries will cause litigation to proliferate, and with this in mind, Philippe and his 2nd edition co-authors sought to provide a handbook for journalists, practitioners, legal advisors, and non-state actors. It was inspired by the “very influential” [Q81] Handbook of the United Nations, published annually by the New Zealand Government which was promoted by Ken Keith ⁷⁷.

The reviews for the Manual were complimentary, because it brought together for the first time under one cover all the significant courts and tribunals. As Vaughan Lowe said in his review, “there was no better guide to the landscape of legal tribunals”.

Clearly, issues raised and considered during the course of writing his Manual caused Philippe to ponder much more deeply the whole issue of international courts and tribunals and how they were adjudicated. Also, through the long influence of James Crawford, by the early 2000s he had realised that “a broad approach to the thinking about, and the practice of, and the writing about international law” [Q34] was drawing him towards issues of the application of the law. Also “I had just had enough…by 2002 we had three kids and life had changed and you want a little less mayhem in your life and you sort of want to know which room you’re going to be teaching in…I loved SOAS to bits, but it was pretty disorganised and Jeffrey Jowell ⁷⁸ came along, then Dean of UCL Law Faculty and said “Hey, would you like to move?” [Q33]

As a result, in 2002 (when he was 42 yrs) Professor Sands moved across town to University College London.

When I asked him to reminisce on his time at SOAS he said “I loved SOAS. Crazy place. Totally dysfunctional. Wonderful students from all over the world. Wonderful, wonderful students, and it was a wacky place and they encouraged us in all these directions. International criminal law, nuclear pollution, nuclear weapons, human rights, development, it was a marvel. I mean I could never have done that at Cambridge. Cambridge would never have allowed it. It’s as simple as that, let’s be frank. Not a critique, different places have their different paths…” [Q32] “I’d been ten years at SOAS, I loved it, but [I] needed…stability…when you have family life. I just craved structure.” … “I still sort of miss SOAS. I miss the intellectual ferment and the ideas and the brilliance of many of the people, but I just needed to be in a more structured, more organised place and UCL offered that…and that was very, very attractive.” [Q33].

University College London (2002-Present): Professor and Director of Centre on International Courts and Tribunals

By the time he moved to UCL, Professor Philippe Sands had a high enough standing to be able to arrange very favourable terms of employment.

Negotiating with Jeffrey Jowell, “…we worked out an arrangement. I was only ever fifty percent by that point [at SOAS], because I was practicing, and running the sustainable development …and international courts part of FIELD’s work, so I brought all that to UCL, which was very attractive to [them] because it brought a lot of publications including…decent publications with OUP, with CUP, and it made International Law vibrant and alive.” [Q33]

The arrangement that he struck with Jeffrey Jowell was that “I would teach a number of courses…[and] I would run a centre on International Courts and Tribunals, and I would work with graduate students, LLM students and PhD students…” [Q36]

One factor on which he was adamant was that I “negotiated to keep myself entirely out of university administration.… I wanted to write, I wanted to lecture, I wanted to do cases, I wanted to arbitrate cases…[but] I did not want to spend my time in committee rooms and meetings debating interminably – that’s just not my skill…I’m of the view that no meeting should last more than half an hour…I know what I’m good at [and] I know what I’m not good at…I’m very efficient, but I’m not an administrator. Other people have that skill. I don’t have that.” [Q36]

Philippe expressed his satisfaction that this arrangement has, over nearly a quarter of a century, worked out well. “…from the get-go, it was a working relationship in which “This is what I’ll bring to the table, this is what I’d like from you in return”…it’s been very upfront…I sort of now get wheeled out for bigger type events and to give speeches and whatever…we’ve worked out a sort of modus vivendi…I’ve really cut back on teaching over 25 years, largely because I just don’t want to examine and spend time doing that with limited time available. There are other things I want to do.” [Q36]

He emphasised that one of the important factors that has altered in the way he has organised his career since arriving at UCL has been the store he has placed on his legal practice. “It is important to recognise that in 1999-2000, James [Crawford] and I contributed to the setting up of the Matrix Chambers…in order to bring together in a single Chambers, areas of law that had been disparate: public law, criminal law, European law, and international law.” It was to be a place where “academics were treated as serious and equal members of the Barristers Chambers…that’s a project I feel very proud of.”

What he achieved was 50 percent university activities and 50 percent legal practice.

Arbitrations and litigations

One of the facets of his long-term involvement in litigation that intrigued me was Professor Sands’s involvement with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where, up to 2025, he had listed 70 cases on his CV; far more than ICSID (31) and ICJ (20). I knew that he was a keen follower of Arsenal football club, but was unaware of any other “sporty traits”, and I asked him about it.

His answer, intriguingly, showed how much “people” and the varied tapestry of life mean to him. “…in 2011, Bruno Simma ⁷⁹…and I had a conversation, and he said that he sits on the Court of Arbitration for Sport…I said “how interesting, I’m a big football fan, and how do you get to do that?”…He said I can recommend they consider inviting you for appointment as one of the 300 members…” [Q38].

The upshot was that an application form arrived and Philippe had to consider what his contributions to sports law had been. “Mine were precisely zero…so all I could put on the form was that I did jogging on Hampstead Heath and was an Arsenal season ticket holder….So I got appointed!” [Q38].

“The very first case that I had was the case of Mohammed bin Hamman ⁸⁰ versus FIFA and it involved an allegation of corruption, and [with] Sepp Blatter ⁸¹, the head of FIFA at the time...appearing before us as a witness…I knew nothing about corruption…This was completely out of my comfort zone, but I loved it for that reason…So over the years I’ve done dozens and dozens of cases…the reason you’re able to do more cases…is [because] pleadings are short and tight…It’s a PCA-type of arbitration...” [Q83]

What makes these cases so interesting for Philippe is the variety: “…I have a case on Wednesday ⁸² about Mexican Taekwondo…occasionally there are international law issues. I was a judge at the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, which was joy of joys…[where] I was paid 100 euros a day, a hotel room and two passes to [watch] anything you wanted.”

“It challenges me to think about areas of law that I don’t know about: doping, drugs, corruption, shooting, football transfers…it’s out of my comfort zone and it’s about people, and I love that.” [Q39].

I also asked Professor Sands about his involvement with ICSID arbitrations, and some aspects of his ICJ work over the years.

He summed up his experiences of ICSID by saying that “…as you will know from some of the things that I’ve written and said , I’m rather critical of the system of investor-state arbitration…It’s essentially been hijacked by large firms…[so that] in many cases it’s been turned into a vast sort of money making operation and I worry about its legitimacy and my own role in it. It’s changed a lot since those first cases that you mentioned.” [Q39].

When he reminisced on his long association with the ICJ, one case stood out in his mind for both a highly personal reason, and for the reason that it allowed his enthusiasm for environmental matters to come to the fore.

It is worth recounting the details because it shows two faces of Philippe Sands’s very upfront approach to law and life. “…there was a dispute between Hungary and Slovakia which went to court in 1993. James [Crawford] was lead counsel for Hungary, and in 1994 my wife and I lost a child and James understood that we were in a state of difficulty and grief and he said “Come and work with me on the Gabčíkovo case”…I knew James, I understood that he was just trying to get me out of… [a]…difficult moment, and so I worked with him on that case…” [Q40].

The second aspect was the importance of environmental matters. “It was the first ever environmental case at the court…We had a wonderful team…” [Q41]. This consisted of James Crawford, Boldizsar Nagy ⁸³, Pierre-Marie Dupuy ⁸⁴, Katherine Gorove ⁸⁵, and Philippe Sands, and what impressed him so much was Crawford’s Australian-style leadership, in which even junior members were allowed to express an opinion on strategy.

The case dealt with the Danube “and essentially new issues…the environment was coming into being as a legal subject at the international level and we were dealing with barrages and electricity generation and flow of river into tributaries and heavy metals being infused into sediments and polluting groundwater. To be honest, the court was really not up to the task of dealing with the task…I think they got the case roughly right in terms of outcomes, but they never really grappled with the science…but it was a special case, no question.” [Q41] And that last remark went for Philippe personally as well as its legal precedence.

Finally, I asked Professor Sands which cases he found the most difficult to pursue. He replied that “…it is cases that raise novel, complex and politically significant issues that are the most challenging to argue because you’re not only dealing with arguments of facts and law, but…arguments of strategy.” [Q42]

He also said that the most gruelling cases are those involving massive human rights violations “…[and the case that has] affected me the most was the case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar ⁸⁶, because the witness testimony was so appalling.” [Q42].

But for Philippe, his two most important cases with which he has been involved were Pinochet ⁸⁷ 1998-99 in the English Courts, and the Chagos Advisory Opinion at the ICJ in 2019, “both of which were very difficult to argue because they dealt with novel issues that were of huge political significance…[these were his cases that] made the biggest difference to the structure of the world…no question, streets ahead.” [Q42]

Selecting International Judges

One of the most important outcomes of his SOAS Manual of International Courts and Tribunals survey for Philippe was the realisation of the serious problem of the selection of judges for the myriad of new international bodies, and how this was bringing the whole system into disrepute. As a result, in 2010, he published what was his last large legal monograph “Selecting International Judges: Principle, Process, and Politics” OUP.

He co-authored this with Mackenzie R., Malleson K., and Martin, P. and it was part of the International Courts and Tribunals Series, which was edited by Mackenzie, Romano (of the Loyola Law School at LA), Sands, and Shany.

The book recorded the results of a three-year project (2006-2009) which entailed a survey of >100 interviews with “players and key actors” in the selection of judges for the ICJ and ICC international courts. The survey was under the auspices of a project at UCL called Process and Legitimacy in the Nomination, Election and Appointment of International Judges (The Project) and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. There was an Advisory Committee chaired by Lord Woolf ⁸⁸.

As Philippe described it “…this book was intended to open up to scrutiny the reality of how international judges are appointed, and it’s not a happy process., and we wanted to make that clear…we had to make sure that our sources were anonymised…it was intended to illuminate the realities, sometimes the shocking realities of how a judge is selected or appointed.” [Q84]

This sorry state of affairs was highlighted in the Foreword of the book by Lord Woolf who made what seemed a surprising statement on page viii to the effect that merit alone cannot be the sole criterion for the appointment of a judge to an international court, and this is backed up in the book on page 174 which came to the conclusion that merit is often a secondary factor, and on page 179 that the concept of merit is a slippery and open-ended concept.

I asked Philippe if these notions meant that getting the best judges for the job was an unsolvable problem. “Well [Woolf] is correct, and it’s not so much that it’s an unsolvable problem, but these things evolve over time and we’re in a very early stage in the development of an international legal order…and there’s nothing much we can do about it because of the way the system works…but by highlighting this reality…it gives rise to debate… [which] eventually brings about change, particularly if there’s been a high degree of embarrassment…” [Q85] Which is where his book comes in, “… the style of writing them is to cause people to talk more openly about the reality of how things happen,” and he rounded off his answer with a statement that sums up one of Philippe Sands’s admirable qualities “… and that [is what] I’ve always seen as part of my social function.” [Q85]

Not only does Professor Sands believe in a Darwinian approach to solving the problems of international law, but also he sees himself as one of the factors that hastens the “evolution by change” process. A bold and inspired role if ever there was one for an eminent international lawyer.

I asked him about two of the reviews of his book by Mia Swart ⁸⁹ and Padraig McAuliffe ⁹⁰. The latter had made the comment that any weakness in a court with less than top-rate judges was often shown by “The Project” survey to be stronger than the sum of its parts, which compensates for the selection process. Philippe agreed “Yes, I think that is true…I was very pleased with this review…because that was really what we wanted to show…understanding what really happens. The role of politics in the identification of a candidate, the role of politics in voting within the [UN]…everybody knows [about it] but there was nothing written down which spelled it out.” [Q89]

I pointed out that McAuliffe said that the length that states go to, to get their nominees appointed to the ICJ and ICC benches, was the stumbling block on the issue of sub-standard judges. “I think that’s right…it’s real and the states are the problem…it’s going to take time for states to relinquish [this habit] …some courts have moved to a judicial commission of appointment…[but] we’re right at the beginning of a very long process.” [Q91-92]

Double hatting

One of the issues raised in “Selecting International Judges” (page 178) was that the judges should be of a high moral character. This highlighted a problem on which Philippe had crusaded for many years in the sometimes nefarious world of arbitration, and for which he rose to prominence in the early 2000s, viz, the practice of what he called “Double Hatting”. I asked him how his campaign against it had progressed.

He explained “…even as a counsel, I noticed, and it really bothered me, that some individuals that I appeared before as arbitrators were also acting as counsel in other cases. In other words, they might spend a morning drafting an award on the meaning of fair and equitable treatment and an afternoon writing a pleading on what fair and equitable treatment ought to mean – and this bothered me as a matter of principle.” [Q93]

“But when I started sitting as an arbitrator, I would see things that would make my hair stand on end…in which an arbitrator would have one of their own cases in which they were acting as counsel cited before them, and I would say to that arbitrator “How can you possibly express a view on the merits of that argument when you drafted it as counsel?”, and they would say “Well, I just wear two separate hats and that’s fine. For me that was very, very problematic.” [Q93] “I think it is on its way out…anecdotally [my belief] is that there’s less of it because it bothers more and more people and it undermines the legitimacy of the system…” [Q94]

I wondered if his campaign of exposing “double hatting” has had any effect. This elicited an outpouring of honesty touching on more general matters that defined some of the finest qualities of the Peoples’ Lawyer, because not all arbitrators are in Philippe Sands’s elevated circumstances “…I’ve been very fortunate, I have a whole other life – a university professor with a salary, as a writer with income from books…so I’ve been in a position where…it matters not to me whether I’m ever appointed again as an arbitrator…that gives me a freedom to say what I think…unlike many colleagues for whom acting as an arbitrator is the only thing they do, and …[by expressing] opinions that are unpopular, you are at risk of ending your livelihood entirely.” …. “Sometimes the things that I say cause real offence to people and I regret that…but some things just need to be said and there are aspects of the practice…that I see that are appalling…or reflect the existence of a racket, which should be stopped…I’d rather say these things and risk never being appointed again rather than remain silent in the face of very clear inequalities.” [Q94]

“Curiously, it seems that the more robust a view you express, so long as it is expressed courteously, not ad hominem, respectfully and substantially, you carry on being appointed and I get far more appointments than I can ever accept…So one of the experiences that I’ve had across my career is expressing robust views, even if they may be unpopular in some quarters, so long as they are done cogently, respectfully, courteously and substantially does not affect your legal practice.” [Q94].

I then asked Philippe if he thought his two books on courts, tribunals, and appointing judges had had any effect on how the system operated over the last few decades.

“…They’ve caused people to think differently about the system of international courts and tribunals, and the world…today seems to me to be different from the world of 30 years ago when I first became involved in them…and that’s a good thing and the system has changed contemporaneously with the publication of the books…Maybe some of the books have had some effect…I simply observe there is a higher degree transparency and I think probity and integrity and professionalism…standards have changed…” [Q95].

As with double-hatting, when people of Professor Sands’s high standing speak out, the world takes notice.

Thoughts on legal writings

Finally, apropos his legal writing, I asked Professor Sands if he could sum up his career in this milieu. “…I’ve chosen to write [on areas that] are very closely connected to the evolution of my academic career, my practitioner’s career, and my life as a human being who encounters different issue…so you could read the totality of these publications as reflecting particular moments in an international legal order that has really changed very substantially since I began…there’s been a deepening, there’s been a broadening, there’s been a thickening, and I think the international legal order has evolved over time and [my] books reflect aspects of that evolution.” [Q96].

I suspect this evolution has been, in some part, due to Philippe Sands’s pithy and inciteful observations on this process.

General literary works

Beginning in 2005, Philippe Sands began to publish what might be called “general” or “popular” books, and when I spoke to him in 2026, there had been nine of these (which are listed in his bibliography), and since he started these, he has published only one “legal” text (Selecting International Judges).

These books have been popular and have sold well, and have made Philippe Sands a global personality for lectures, interviews, and talk shows. They are too well-known and wide-ranging to have been the subject of his ESA interviews, but I did pose some questions to Philippe on their general significance and the parallels with Philip Allott’s similar course of writing books to “popularise” legal issues in order to bring them to the attention of lay-people. I asked him why he made this dramatic change in his writing format.

“I came to understand that the values that I cared about, commitment to the idea of an international rule of law, accountability for international injustice…were under threat, and in order to protect those values, I needed to connect with a broader audience. Talking only to law students, only to lawyers, only to judges, only to international law folks is very important, but it wasn’t enough. If we’re going to defend those essential values, we have to reach out to a broader community, and it was the issues around the Iraq War that caused me to write Lawless World, which was the first of those books.” [Q99]

“I wasn’t purposely mirroring or following Philip, but we’ve…taken, in a sense, a similar road, a recognition that the community of which we are members is significant and respected, but it’s not enough.” [Q100]

As for the robust stance he took in Lawless World, Philippe said apropos the British Government’s stance on the Iraq War “…it had bent the rules in order to justify its participation and the book…achieved a certain amount of notoriety…because it told the true story…It has damaged or ended certain relationships and I have no problem with that being the price to pay to tell the truth about was happened…Let’s call a spade a spade. How the international legal order really works, how certain international lawyers played a key role, how certain government legal advisors acted to bend the rules.” [Q101]

His Other Worlds: Theatre and Literature

As listeners to his interviews will realise, one of the many parts that make up Philippe Sands’s personality is his love of acting and mixing with literary people.

To draw out some of the detail on this I asked him what his involvement with live theatre was and he mentioned the Tricycle Theatre and the Soho Theatre Company.

“I was on the board of the Soho Theatre Company, and I enjoyed that a lot…[it started in my Cambridge days with] Abigail Morris ⁹¹ who was married to David Evans ⁹² whom I had directed at Cambridge University in a couple of plays…” while the Tricycle Theatre wanted “someone with a legal background on the board and who was interested in culture and reaching broader audiences with complex legal issues…I was on the board for several years…it’s not far from here…in Kilburn.” [Q45]

“I was invited to the Hay Festival for the first time in 2005…[to talk about] “Lawless World”… and one thing led to another, and I was…[then] asked to be on the Advisory Board of the Hay Festival ,… and then the Board…and the back to the Advisory Board because by then I had written various books, and it’s useful or helpful or interesting for people in the cultural world, the literary world, to have someone on board who’s a lawyer, but who has a connection with those literary things…” [Q46]

He then spoke about the “Poets, Essayists, and Novelists”, PEN group ⁹³. “…the invitation to join the board of PEN…came because of [my] entry into the literary world and in particular some public statements I’d made about the importance of free speech in a legal and non-legal context…and then after … five or six years…they asked me if I wanted to be President of the organisation, and I was for four years, which I loved, and which raised the issues about free expression and cultural freedom and was very international in its outlook and the work [it did]. ⁹⁴” [Q46]

Professor Sands has also been made an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (in 2023). He explained that “it was a combo of contribution to the rule of international law and cultural aspects of that…the combination of barrister, academic, and literary character…. I regularly do events there… [for example] … for young people, for school children on the rule of law…it’s very important that we reach out to younger people…to encourage them in certain directions…we really care about school kids from regular schools…[to] just talk about international law…I love doing that…” [Q50-51]

And lastly, I asked Philippe how he had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020. “I have no idea. I got a letter one morning saying “We’re delighted to invite you to be a fellow. Would you accept if invited?”, and I said yes…. I’m not actively involved in it, but I’m very supportive of it…it’s not my legal output, it’s my literary output, it’s “East West Street” and the “Ratlines “that have caused that to happen. But I’m proud to be a member of institution [because] I’m proud that writers think of me not only as a lawyer or an academic, but also as a writer.” [Q47]

It is very clear from his two interviews with me that Professor Sands sees his literary output to be just as important as his legal writing output in the form of text books and monographs. I suspect this is very unusual amongst his international law academic and practitioner peers – perhaps Philip Allott excepted.

This was brought out graphically when we talked about Philippe’s writing career in general. In reply to a question about what inspired or drove him to write, bearing in mind that it was the realisation of his love of writing after his Chernobyl book that unleashed his literary talents, he recognised his good fortune in having had such a rich life. He had been blessed with good teachers and colleagues, and he realises there is a “beating heart that runs through all I do… [and this is] the protection of the value system that was represented in that moment in 1945, which was about saying that the power of the state is not unlimited…it is [constrained] under this thing we call international law.” [Q106]

“I essentially engage in the same issues in different forms…if asked to choose between a single judgment or a single novel…[in which he had been engaged], I would choose the novel …and what I refer to was the experience between 1973 and 2000 when Augusto Pinochet ⁹⁵ was in power in Chile…which I address in my book “38 Londres Street” [Q106]

It was this lacuna between 1973 and 2000, in which there had been no court cases against Pinochet for his crimes, which writers filled with their novels ⁹⁶. So that although the “values that I care about are promoted by international law…even more they are promoted by regular folks, including people who tell stories in novels, in non-fiction, in poetry, and in film. So…while I have been privileged and very fortunate to work in the field of international law, that field must go forward hand in hand with these other worlds in which the telling of stories – which is in large part what international law is about – are also allowed to proceed.” [Q106]

When I asked him to consider which book or piece of his writing he would consider his most important, and for which he would like to be remembered, he did not mention any of his legal texts and monographs. “I think the book that has sold the most is “East West Street” and plainly that has had an impact on peoples’ thinking and the other books that I’ve been able to write are largely because of “East West Street”…in the round it will be the trilogy that comes together: “East West Street”, “The Rat Line”, and “38 Londres Street” and there is a fourth one that will be published in 2030 on Ukraine and a lady called Victoria Amelina ⁹⁷, who was a friend of mine and who was killed by a Russian bomb attack on a pizza restaurant in the Donbas region and I think those four together tell a story.” [Q107]

In other words, Philippe sees writing as another way of telling international law’s story.

Reflections

Philippe Sands has had a very eventful and successful career, and I tried to find out which aspects of it have given him satisfaction and what he considers have motivated him and driven him in the directions he has taken along his highway of life.

So many people have crossed his path and have influenced him in one way or another, and I asked if there was any one person he could single out that had had the greatest influence upon him.

“That’s a tough question…I would find it very difficult to single out a single person because…a number of people have played absolutely key roles at central parts of my life: Mr Burke…Mr Lauterpacht, Mr Allott, Mr Kennedy, Mr Crawford, Anya Hurlbert, and Natalia Schiffrin…” [Q53]

It is telling how he narrowed it down, because it also revealed what he thought were his own most important contributions to society. “…If I look at all the things that I’ve done, I think the most important thing…[is to] bring issues of international law to a broader audience…and the person who has been most responsible for that is Natalia, my wife, because of the advice she has given and because of the significance of the accident of having married into a family with a reference for matters literary.” [Q53] And he explained that it was she who helped him build “…a bridge between the world of scholarship and litigation and legal ideas, and the world of life more generally…” [Q53].

Nevertheless, it was telling that he does not always agree with her: “My wife is totally against [my accepting honorary degrees]. She says I should not accept them…she says my ego is quite big enough and I should turn them all down…but I find it difficult to say no [because] I quite like the pomp and ceremony. I like ritual….and [anyway] I think it’s a bit rude. [Also,] they are invariably focussed on…[the fact] that I’ve brought debate and discussion about international law to a general audience…and we have to reach ordinary folk…” [Q52]

Because Philippe had moved between institutions frequently: Cambridge, Harvard, Cambridge again, King’s College, SOAS and UCL, I wondered what were the most important events or crossroads, that had determined his trajectory. On reflection, he couldn’t name one special professional career event, “[I] can’t separate out the personal and the professional and the intellectual. They’re all interconnected…it would be lovely to say yes there was one intellectual moment that was incredibly important in taking the direction that I took, but I don’t think life is like that. It’s…really personal things that cause us to do what we do and take the directions that we do and I’ve often thought that [there] was an absolutely crucial [such] moment when pushed in a particular direction.” [Q54]. And what was “that”?, readers will ask.

It was “an absolutely decisive moment…in the summer of 1990…[when] my uncle and his two boys were killed in a car accident [while] his wife, my aunt, survived…that was a shocking event that must have had some sort of subconscious effect on what’s important in life, what’s not important in life and how those issues…inform how you spend your time and what you put your energies into…and that event…[which] came in the first year that I’d met Natalia…created conditions that reinforced a particular sense of direction that would be taken later.” [Q54]

Professor Sands has gained many honours and accolades, including being made a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (GCSK) in 2021 for his services to Mauritius during the Chagos Archipelago case before the ICJ (2019). This was in addition to several honorary degrees. I asked him which of his achievements have given him the most pleasure and of which is he most proud, and he replied that it was a ceremony that had yet to happen when I posed the question on 18th May, but which had taken place the day before our second interview on 25th June 2026: his Honorary Doctorate in Law at Cambridge, alongside Angela Merkel ⁹⁸ and Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill ⁹⁹.

“I do enjoy ritual and ceremony and I like the sense of approbation…it’s the only one that I’ve invited Natalia to, and my mum, and my son…I’m really happy because it’s like a sort of coming home.” [Q55]

At this point, I realised what a very soft spot Philippe had for his alma mater. “Cambridge is what got me started…Philip Allott’s coming, and John Baker’s coming, and Eilis….and I’ll be thinking of Eli and … all those other characters, and Cathy ¹⁰⁰, and the Research Centre….That must say something…it’s where I started when I was 18…it’s just so lovely to go back.” [Q55]

His enthusiasm and surprise at the honour were sincere. “I was incredibly surprised, but was incredibly touched. It just came out of the blue…no-one warned me…and it means a lot because it is a sort of recognition by an institution that gave me a lot and which I recognise as having formed me in so many ways…” [Q55]

The boy from University College School Hampstead, who had failed to get into Bristol and who has travelled so long and far was coming back to Cambridge where he had had a less than auspicious start at Corpus Christi in 1978.

My final question was to ask him to replay the Tape of Time, and decide if he would choose the same path again. His reply, which I have pre-empted earlier in this biography, that he would not have done law, rather literature or history, did not elicit an answer about whether he would have tried somewhere else after being turned down by Bristol, but he did admit that had he not done Law, then the “happy place” place he now inhabits might never have materialised: he certainly wouldn’t have met Natalia, who is his lode star. By this realisation he is “torn” – “but being torn is [a] very regular [experience apropos his] books…that’s where I’m most torn”. [Q56]

Thus ended my two interviews with Professor Philippe Joseph Sands, International Lawyer Extraordinaire, Lawyer for the People, Lawyer for the Natural World. A man of so many parts: made in Middle Class suburban Belsize Park, Corpus Christi, honed and greatly influenced by America and its liberal East Coast values, and champion of the underdog in far-flung corners of the world. Erudite, forceful, unafraid to fight his corner even if he ruffles powerful feathers. It was a privilege to have interviewed him for ESA, and to have been invited to his home and to have met his wife, Natalia, who has been such a power behind the throne.

I have to record that before I left his house, he gave me a generously inscribed copy of his 10th anniversary edition of East West Street, and that he was very complimentary to my previous efforts in recording the lives of many of his personal heroes in the ESA. That meant a lot to me. His graciousness will live with me.

Footnotes

1. Hon Fellow, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. I spent 25 years in the Cambridge Squire Law Library and since retirement, 3 years at the Lauterpacht Centre. ↩
2. The Emirates. Highbury, their old ground, is only a few hundred yards farther on. ↩
3. Allan Sands (1924-2012). ↩
4. Which was established in 1948. ↩
5. Ruth née Buchholz (1938 - ). ↩
6. Leon Buchholz (1904-1997). He was born in Lemberg = Lviv and moved to Vienna in 1914. ↩
7. Elsie Maude Tilney (1893-1974). B. in Norwich, died in Florida. ↩
8. Lauterpacht, Sir Hersch (1897– 1960), Judge of the International Court of Justice, Member, Permanent Court of Arbitration, Whewell Professor of International Law at Univ. of Cambridge (1938–55), Hon. Fellow, London School of Economics, 1958. ↩
9. André Léon Blum (1872-1950), three-time Prime Minister of France (1936-37, 1938, 1946-7), “socialism within democratic, parliamentary, and constitutional boundaries”. ↩
10. Francisco Franco (1892-1975), military dictator of Spain (1936-75). Coincidentally, Franco died in 1975, the same year as Philippe’s parents divorced. ↩
11. (António de Oliveira Salazar 1889-1970). President of Portugal (1932-68). ↩
12. John Clare (1793-1864). A working-class, rural poet from Peterborough. ↩
13. William Blake (1757-1827). A Romantic, political, writer and artist. ↩
14. George Orwell (1903-1950). Novelist, essayist, journalist, and social critic who opposed totalitarianism. ↩
15. James Richard Crawford (1948-2021). Whewell Professor of International Law (1992-2014), Judge ICJ (2015-2021). ↩
16. Michael Kuczynski (1941-2025), Peruvian “structuralist economist”. His brother Pedro was President of Peru (2016-18). ↩
17. Marc E Owen (b. 1959), specialised in corporate law. Oxford BA & BCL, Bar 1984, MBA Stamford 1986. ↩
18. Robert Yewdall Jennings (1913-2004) Whewell Professor of International Law Â(1955-81), QC 1969, Judge & President of the ICJ (1982-94). ↩
19. Anya Hurlbert (1958 - ), Viscountess Ridley, Prof of Visual Neuroscience Newcastle University from 2005 – present. ↩
20. Kurt Lipstein (1909-2006). He was a Jewish refugee from pre-War Germany. Professor of Comparative Law (1973-76). Clare College. ↩
21. Gyneth Lipstein née Herford (1910-1998). ↩
22. Sir Basil Spyridonos Markesinis (1944-2023) taught at Cambridge from 1970-86. ↩
23. Sir Eli Lauterpacht (1928 – 2017), Director, Research Centre for International Law, 1983–95, then Director Emeritus, and Hon. Professor of International Law, since 1994, University of Cambridge, practising international lawyer and arbitrator. ↩
24. Sir Christopher Greenwood (b. 1955), KC, Master of Magdalene College Cambridge (2020 -), Judge ICJ (2009-2018). ↩
25. Philip James Allott (b. 1937), Professor of International Public Law (2000-2004), HM Diplomatic Service (1960–1973). ↩
26. Sir Derek William Bowett (1927-2009), Whewell Professor of International Law (1981-91), President of Queens’ College (1969 – 1982). ↩
27. Allott argues that humanity has emerged into a single, global society, but our legal and political systems have failed to keep pace. He asserts that the traditional "inter-state" model of international relations, which treats countries as isolated, self-interested actors, is obsolete. Instead, Eunomia advocates a single, world-wide constitution to serve the survival and prosperity of the entire human race rather than individual governments. (OUP promotion). ↩
28. Clive Parry (1917-1982), Professor of International Law, Downing College (1969 – 1982). ↩
29. When Jennings went to the ICJ, Eli had hoped for the Whewell Chair, that Derek Bowett was given. ↩
30. Rachel Lauterpacht née Steinberg (1900-1989). ↩
31. Based in Aldermanbury Square, within the City. In 1987 they merged with another firm to become Clifford Chance, one of the “Magic Circle”. ↩
32. David W. Kennedy (b. 1954), currently Manly O. Hudson Professor of Law, Harvard. Kennedy became a good friend of Martti Koskenniemi (b.1953) Professor of International Law at Helsinki University and who was interviewed for ESA in 2008 - 2009. ↩
33. Clarence Clyde Ferguson (1924-1983), Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law at Harvard (1980-1983). He joined the faculty in 1975. He died of a heart attack in December 1983, just three months after Philippe sat beside him. ↩
34. Lawrence P. MacDonald (1935-1983). Anti-communist, Democratic Congressman from Georgia. ↩
35. The legal fallout from KAL 007, Harvard International Review, 6 (2), 44-45. ↩
36. Sir John Hamilton Baker (b. 1944), Downing Professor of the Laws of England (1998-2011), Literary Dir, Selden Soc., 1981–2011. ↩
37. Aerial Incident of 27 July 1955 (Israel v. Bulgaria), Judgment, 1959 I.C.J. Reports 127. ↩
38. Judge Stephen Myron Schwebel (1929-2026), ICJ Judge & President (1981-2000). ↩
39. March or April [Q18]. ↩
40. Edward Gerald Patrick St George (1928-2004), Born in Lija, Malta, son of the Marquis Zimmermann-Barbaro of St George. Business man. Qualified as a barrister, and was Chief Magistrate in Nassau, Bahamas (1956-1960). Ran the Grand Bahama Port Authority (a freeport). ↩
41. In 2002 it expanded into 7 Cranmer Road through donations from the governments of Bahrain, Malaysia, and Singapore, and Trinity College. It is called Bahrain House. ↩
42. Dame Eleanor Veronica Elizabeth Sharpstone (b. 1955), KC, Goodhart Professor (2023-24). ↩
43. Standard Chartered Bank v International Tin Council — 17 April 1986; JH Rayner (Mincing Lane) Ltd v Department of Trade and Industry — 24 June 1987; Re International Tin Council — 22 Jan  1987. ↩
44. This was funded by Walter H Annenberg (1908-2002), whose father Moses Annenberg (1877-1942) had founded a publishing empire. Moses was an East Prussian who came to the USA from Kalwischken, which is in present Poland, close to the border of the Kaliningrad enclave. ↩
45. Sands, P. J. (Ed.) Chernobyl: Law and Communication: Transboundary Nuclear Air Pollution—The Legal Materials. (Grotius Publications Limited 1988) 312pp. ↩
46. Prof Moshe Hirsch. Von Hofmannsthal Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ↩
47. Stephen C McCaffrey. Professor of Law, University of the Pacific. ↩
48. Henry VI Part 3, Act 2 Scene 5. ↩
49. Alan Vaughan Lowe (b.1952), KC, Chichele Professor of Public International Law (1999-2012). ↩
50. Ian McColl Kennedy (b.1941), later Professor of Health Law, Ethics & Policy UCL (1997-2001). ↩
51. Durwood Zaelke (b. 1947), BA at UCLA 1969, JD Duke University 1972. ↩
52. Established as a Private Limited Company on 26 Jan 1990. ↩
53. In fact, it was Tuesday 6th November 1990. ↩
54. Patricia Birnie (1926-2013), Director International Maritime Law Institution (1989-94). ↩
55. Alan Gordon Boyle (1953-2023), Professor of Public International Law, Edinburgh (1995-2017). ↩
56. Their book was International Law and the Environment, OUP, 1992. ↩
57. Charles Alexandre Kiss (1925-2007), defended Hungary in the ICJ Gabčíkovo case. His book was called Droit international de l’environnement: Paris by Editions A. Pedone, 1989. He brought out an English edition in 1991 with Dinah Shelton International Environmental Law, Transnational Publishers New York, 541pp. ↩
58. He says so in the Introduction to the First Edition, p. 3. ↩
59. International Law and the Environment appeared just before the Rio Conference in 1992, so in this sense stole a march on Philippe’s book. ↩
60. Sir Ian Brownlie (1932 – 2010), International Law practitioner; Chichele Professor of Public International Law 1980 – 1999. ↩
61. Polly Higgins (1968 – 2019), Author, Barrister and ecocide law expert. ↩
62. Jan Glazewski, (b. 1953 in Paarl, South Africa), Emeritus Professor at Institute of Marine & Environmental Law, University of Cape Town. ↩
63. Michael Bowman, Honorary Associate Professor of Law, University of Nottingham, Co -founder in 1983 with David Harris of Treaty Centre at Nottingham University. ↩
64. Robert McCracken, KC, FTB Chambers. ↩
65. Eco Oro Minerals Corp. v Republic of Colombia ICSID case 2024 ARB/16/41. ↩
66. Red Eagle Exploration Ltd v Republic of Colombia ICSID case 2024 ARB/18/12. ↩
67. 25th June 2026. ↩
68. Natalia Schriffin (b. 1964 - ), Human Rights Lawyer, Member Family Justice Council (2022 – 2025), Associate Advicenow (2020 - ). ↩
69. André Schriffin (1935 – 2013), Publisher, Editor & Writer, Managing Director of Pantheon Books (1965 – 1990), Founding Director of The New Press (1992 - 2003), Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (2011). ↩
70. Cynthia Crawford Liechtenstein (1934-2024), law degrees from Harvard and Yale. ↩
71. Julia Nathalie Hobsbawm Bamping (b. 1964). Chief Executive, Fully Connected Services Ltd, since 2005; Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Workathon, since 2024; Founder, World Work Organisation, since 2025. ↩
72. Manual of International Courts and Tribunals (Editor, with Ruth Mackenzie and Yuval Shany) (Butterworths, July 1999). ↩
73. Cesare P.R. Romano, Professor of Law, Loyola Law School. ↩
74. Ruth Mackenzie, Reader in International Law, University of Westminster. ↩
75. PICT. Judge James Crawford was a member of the Steering Group, along with Robbie Jennings and David Kennedy ↩
76. James Harrison, Professor of Environmental Law, University of Edinburgh. ↩
77. Kenneth James Keith, Sir, (1937 – 2015), New Zealand jurist and scholar. Served as Judge on the ICJ 2006 – 2015. ↩
78. Sir Jeffrey Lionel Jowell (b. 1938) in Cape Town. Emeritus Professor of Law (UCL). ↩
79. Bruno Eckard Simma (b. 1941), Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich, Director of Inst. Of International Law (1973-2003). ↩
80. Mohammed bin Hamman (b. 1947). Qatari businessman, former President of the Asian Football Confederation. ↩
81. Joseph Sepp Blatter (b.1936), 8th President of FIFA (1998-2015). ↩
82. 20th May 2026. ↩
83. Boldizsar Nagy (b. 1953) in Budapest, Law degree from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. Philippe’s first “communist” contact. ↩
84. Pierre-Marie Dupuy (b. 1946) in Paris. Currently Hon Prof at Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (2008-present). ↩
85. Katherine Gorove (b. 1958-59?), Georgetown Law Professor. ↩
86. 2022 Judgment: Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Gam. v. Myan.), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, 2022 I.C.J. Rep. 477 (July 22). ↩
87. R v. Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No. 3), [2000] 1 A.C. 147 (H.L. 1999) ↩
88. Harry Kenneth Woolf, Baron, (b. 1933 - ), Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales 2000 – 2005. ↩
89. Mia Swart, Associate Professor of Law University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg. ↩
90. Padraig McAuliffe, Professor of Lawl University of Liverpool. ↩
91. Abigail Morris (b. 1964, London). Sidney Sussex, Cambridge. Was Artistic Director & Chief Executor of Soho Theatre (1992-2005), transformed it using National Lottery funds. ↩
92. David Evans (b. 1962, Wolverhampton), TV and film director (e.g. Downton Abbey). ↩
93. English PEN is a company limited by guarantee #5747142 (England & Wales) and a registered charity #1125610 ↩
94. He joined the Board in 2013, and was President 2018-2023. ↩
95. Augusto Pinochet (1919-2022), 4th President of Chile. ↩
96. Philippe give the example of Roberto Bolaño, (1953 – 2003), Chilean novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. ↩
97. Victoria Amelina (1986–2023), writer, poet, PEN Ukraine member and human rights defender. She and Philippe shared a public stage at the Lviv Book Forum in October 2022 to discuss justice, criminality, and accountability. ↩
98. Angela Dorothea Merkel (1954 – ), Chancellor of Germany (2005 – 2021). ↩
99. Baroness Carr of Walton-on-The-Hill (1964 - ), Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales, since 2023. ↩
100. Lady Catherine Lauterpacht née Daly, (1938 – 2024). ↩