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Philippe Sands

Philippe Sands is professor of law at University College London. His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity is published by Alfred Knopf/Weidenfeld; Nicholson in May 2016. His film My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did opens at Picturehouse Central and Home Manchester

November 2025

  • A UN peacekeeper.

    Trump and his ilk imagine a world without international law – but they will not achieve it

    Philippe Sands
    History shows us that the creation of international rules and institutions is followed by their partial destruction, and a reconstruction that builds on what came before, says professor of law Philippe Sands

December 2023

  • UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT<br>A local resident reacts standing inside her flat damaged by recent shelling in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on December 12, 2023, amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (Photo by STRINGER / AFP) (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

    From Gaza to Ukraine, what would the pioneers of human rights think of our world today?

    Philippe Sands
    The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the most vulnerable: we must fight to defend and extend it, says professor of law Philippe Sands

October 2022

  • John le Carré

    ‘Each envelope was a treasure’: how I became le Carré’s friend and reader

  • Books and rubble at a school bombed by the Russian army in Bakhmut, Ukraine, July 2022.

    ‘Hope matters’: Ukrainian and international authors on why literature is important in times of conflict

February 2022

  • Officials raise the Mauritian flag above an atoll on the Chagos Islands and sing the national anthem in a ceremony on Monday.

    Today in Focus
    The displaced Chagos Islanders yearning for home

    Over 50 years after they were forcibly removed from their homes, the former residents of Britain’s last colony in Africa are challenging the UK’s claim to the archipelago. Lawyer Philippe Sands is advising the Mauritian government in the legal battle
    Podcast26:56

January 2022

  • Louise Rands Silva had a strong commitment to community engagement, working in education as a forest school leader, and teaching English to refugee families

    Other lives
    Louise Rands Silva obituary

    Other lives: Assistant on legal matters, international courts and tribunals, including at The Hague, and educator

June 2021

  • Judge James Richard Crawford, member of the International Court of Justice from 2015 up until his Death this week

    James Crawford obituary

    Energetic public international lawyer who advised many countries and reshaped the rules on wrongdoings between them

December 2020

  • VARIOUS<br>Mandatory Credit: Photo by Rob Judges/REX/Shutterstock (265764c) VARIOUS

    John le Carré remembered by writers and friends: 'He always had a naughty twinkle in the eye'

    Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Tom Stoppard, Ralph Fiennes, John Boorman and more pay tribute to a master who transcended the limits of spy fiction

October 2020

  • Ahmet Altan is detained again on 12 November 2019 in Istanbul.

    Books blog
    Writers need PEN more than ever

    A century after the international association of writers was founded, authors are under unprecedented threat

April 2020

  • Thomas Mensah in 2001. He became involved in public service when he joined the International Maritime Organization in 1968.

    Thomas Mensah obituary

    Lawyer who was the world’s leading arbitrator on the settlement of international maritime disputes
  • 24. 1939 - Bochnia - Otto supervises execution

    On the trail of a Nazi war criminal: 'It's my duty as a son to find the good in my father'

    East West Street author Philippe Sands uncovers secrets and lies on the trail of Otto Wächter, his devoted wife – and the son brought up to believe his father was a decent man
  • Horst Wächter (from left), with Charlotte, Otto and Traute, in 1944.

    'I was a Nazi boy - then everything was gone': Philippe Sand's The Ratline - audio extract

    In this extract of Sands’s new book, he meets Horst Wächter, the son of a senior Nazi who was never caught
    Podcast10:03

September 2019

  • Supreme Court rules on suspension of British parliament<br>epaselect epa07865554 Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller (C) leaves the Supreme Court for the result of a hearing on the prorogation of parliament, in London, Britain, 24 September 2019. The Supreme Court ruled that the suspension of parliament by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was unlawful. EPA/NEIL HALL

    Today in Focus
    Unlawful: the supreme court stuns Boris Johnson

    Philippe Sands QC on the decision by the supreme court to rule against the government on the suspension of parliament. Plus: Shoshana Zuboff on how to fight back against surveillance capitalism
    Podcast23:40

May 2019

  • Chagossians pictured in London, 2011.

    At last, the Chagossians have a real chance of going back home

    Philippe Sands
    Britain’s behaviour towards its former colony has been shameful. The UN resolution changes everything, says lawyer Philippe Sands

March 2019

  • Geoffrey Cox

    Geoffrey Cox has no grounds to change his mind on the Northern Ireland backstop

    Philippe Sands
    Breaking international treaties unilaterally is seldom possible – as I know from experience, says law professor Philippe Sands

August 2017

  • Immigration and passport control, Heathrow

    Reformation 2017
    Philippe Sands: ‘We are citizens of the world – we need a global passport’

    On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the professor of law calls for an end to the ‘absurd, monopoly power’ of the national passport

April 2017

  • Primo Levi in 1940 … he was arrested in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz in 1944.

    Rereading
    Primo Levi’s If This is a Man at 70

    Ahead of a public reading, Philippe Sands explores the lessons of Levi’s humanity-filled holocaust memoir

February 2017

  • Sir Elihu Lauterpacht was fearlessly independent and persuasive

    Sir Elihu Lauterpacht obituary

    Lawyer who as both advocate and adjudicator advanced the cause of international justice

November 2016

  • Philippe Sands and Hisham Matar

    A life in ...
    ‘We’re on a xenophobic path – someone needs to press pause’: Philippe Sands in conversation with Hisham Matar

    Philippe Sands and Hisham Matar
    The books interview: the lawyer and novelist, both nominated for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction, announced on 15 November, discuss human rights, citizenship and identity

May 2016

  • A general view in the Palace of Justice, Nuernberg, as defendants heard parts of the verdict read by the International Military Tribunal, Sep. 30, 1946. Eddie Worth, the AP photographer who took this picture covered the war crimes trials of Nazi leaders for nearly a year as part of a long and distinguished photographic career, died Sunday Nov. 10 2002 at the age of 93, according to relatives. Back row, left to right: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur Von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz Von Ppaen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Albert Speer. Front row, left to right: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Albert Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher and Walter Funk. (AP Photo/ Eddie Worth)

    How the Nuremberg trials found names for the Nazis' crimes

    Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands tells the personal stories of how genocide and crimes against humanity were first defined in law
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