XClose

European Voices

Home
Menu

Philippe Sands: Professor of the Public Understanding of Law

For Prof Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals, the personal is inseparable from the political.  

Professor Philippe Sands

9 June 2021

For Prof Philippe Sands QC, the personal is inseparable from the political.  

The renowned barrister, author, and academic says he “fell into” the sprawling field of international law because of his own family history. His mother was a child refugee – one of the thousands of “Hidden Children” during the German occupation of France. Though this family history was not discussed much in his childhood home, Sands now recognizes it as one of the factors which pushed him toward the pursuit of justice on the international level.  

“For decades, I didn’t explore the personal connection with my work,” he said. “In academia and as an English barrister, you’re sort of told to keep the personal out of it.” 

But in 2010, he was invited to Lviv, Ukraine to lecture on his work on crimes against humanity, and began to research his grandfather’s roots in the city. There, he said, is where “the international, professional, and personal all collided” – a collision that would ultimately lead to his award-winning book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.* 

Bolstered by the support of an editor and his own skepticism about “objectivity” in the law, Sands says he began to embrace bringing personal perspectives to the classroom and the courtroom. 

“This approach has changed my view of what our function is as an academic and practitioner,” he said. 

This approach has also resonated with students and audiences around the world – The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive, the follow-up to East West Street, was released last year to great acclaim. Sands is currently at work on the third book in the trilogy.  

“I’ve become something of a storyteller,” he says. “I’m interested in using the stories that I come across both as a teaching tool … and as a means of communicating with judges.”  

He says that his work has also affected his view of history and his own family.  

“The moment you open that door, you look at history in a different way, and it causes you to look at the present in a different way.”  

Sands has also developed East West Street into a documentary film and presented a BBC Radio documentary on high-ranking Nazi Otto Wächter’s evasion of justice, which eventually became his book The Ratline. Both books keep with the theme of reconciling with one’s family history, no matter what secrets and atrocities it may contain.   

International law for an engaged public 

Sands’ international legal career began with a focus on matters of the environment and natural resources. In the late nineties, following several global events in human rights – chiefly, the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London – Sands’ career was “redirected” into the fields of human rights and criminal law.  

The two topics came together last summer, when Sands was asked to co-chair an international working group to define a new international crime of “ecocide’ – massive damage to the environment.  

“It does seem there’s a sort of seamlessness on all of these issues,” he observes.  

This project was commissioned following a group of Swedish parliamentarians’ involvement in Stop Ecocide efforts and has drawn wide support across Europe, including from French president Emmanuel Macron. 

In addition to his work as a barrister – he is a founding member of Matrix Chambers and has argued high-profile cases at the European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice – Sands wears several other hats, all in the service of contributing to the public understanding of human rights and international law.   

Since 2018 Sands has served as the President of English PEN, and at UCL, he is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals. He is the author of 17 books, and his legal and political commentary appears regularly in the media.  

Sands views the role of the academic as one that extends far beyond the walls of the ivory tower.  

“A wonderful university is a broad church,” he says, and praises his own academic home, the UCL Faculty of Laws, as “wonderfully supportive” and “actively engaged.”  

He is excited by the connections which emerge between his interests in international law, and the many areas of expertise represented by his colleagues in Laws and UCL more broadly.  

“All these extraordinary people I’m increasingly interacting with in different departments – SSEES, Psychology, Linguistics – are a real source of enrichment,” he said. “In many ways I wish I could be part of the UCL community generally and not a particular faculty.”  

Just keep swimming

The Covid-19 pandemic has not slowed Sands down. Joking that there must be a German word for “a secret love of lockdown,” Sands says he has become much more productive without a packed travel schedule and appreciates the sense of community he has found.  

But even from his desk at home, his focus remains global – at present, his international working group on ecocide is preparing to present their definition to the world. He is also writing two books which aim to present aspects of international law to a public audience: The first examines British colonialism in the Chagos Islands by following the life of a single woman, and the second is the follow-up to The Ratline and East West Street. 

“I love what I do. I love the fact that the area of the law that I’m involved in is constantly evolving,” Sands says. Quoting Annie Hall, he notes: “A relationship is like a shark, it has to keep moving forward or it dies. So it is with international law.”  


Learn more about Sands and his book East West Street in this 2017 episode of Talking Europe, the UCL European Institute podcast. 

SoundCloud Widget Placeholderhttps://soundcloud.com/european-institute/philippe-sands-on-east-west-st...