Re-framing cultural, legal and public understandings of atrocities and their perpetrators
This case study is part of the 2021 REF submission in which UCL Laws was assessed as No.1 for research excellence in the UK.
Background
Professor Sands has developed a body of work on crimes against humanity, genocide, and the post-WWII development of international law and courts, alongside his work as a barrister in connection with crimes of this nature. This research has explored the trajectory, promise and limits of prosecutions for international crimes, both before international tribunals and before national tribunals exercising ‘universal jurisdiction’ (permitting prosecution even where the prosecuting state has no particular connection to the crimes). These threads of research and methodological innovation were critical to Sands’ authoring of the best-selling and award-winning non-fiction book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2014).
Impact
Professor Philippe Sands’ research, leading to the multi-award-winning East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2014), has blended international legal history, biographies of leading lawyers, and family history, in a way that has:
- (i) generated substantial new cultural artefacts on history, law and justice;
- (ii) globally engaged diverse groups in international criminal law and justice, and strengthened the campaign for a new convention on crimes against humanity;
- (iii) facilitated active practices of memorialisation and commemoration; and
- (iv) injected momentum into public reckoning over responsibility for past atrocities.
Audiences of millions around the world have been introduced to a history of international criminal justice they would not otherwise have known, and have been invited to reflect on our legal apparatus for international criminality and our reckoning with the past.
Other media
- A performance piece, A Song of Good and Evil, written by Sands and interweaving the story and prominent figures from EWS with photographs and music from their lives (performed in English, French and German, at more than 24 venues in 11 different countries, viewed by more than 20,000 people);
- A documentary film, My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did, featuring descendants of Nazis whom Sands met in the course of researching EWS (premiered April 2015, Tribeca Film Festival; screened in cinemas in 6 countries from Apr– Nov 2015; broadcast by BBC Four in 2016; available on DVD and Amazon Prime video internationally); and
- A BBC Radio 4 podcast, The Ratline (more than 2.2m downloads), with Sunday Times bestselling book, ‘The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of Nazi’ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2020), tracing the family history of one of these figures (55,000 copies sold in UK across print, e-book and audiobook to 31 December 2020; translation into 3 languages)
Philippe Sands, ‘International Law Transformed? From Pinochet to Congo?’ (2003) 16 Leiden Journal of International Law 37–53.
Philippe Sands, ‘Twin Peaks: The Hersch Lauterpacht Draft Nuremberg Speeches’ (2012) 1 Cambridge International Law Journal 37–44 (formerly Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law).
Philippe Sands, ‘A memory of justice: the unexpected place of Lviv in international law—A personal history’ (2010) 43 Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 739–758.
Philippe Sands, East West Street. On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2016).