Professor Philippa Webb

Philippa Webb is Co-Director of the Centre for International Governance and Dispute Resolution (CIGAD), and Professor of Public International Law. She joined The Dickson Poon School of Law in 2012 after a decade in international legal practice.

Professor Webb holds a doctorate (JSD) and an LLM from Yale Law School. She obtained the University Medal in her LLB and the University Medal and First Class Honours in her BA (Asian Studies), both of which were awarded by the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Professor Webb is active in the field of public international law. She is on the Public International Law Advisory Panel of the British Institute of International & Comparative Law and the Board of the Clooney Foundation for Justice. She previously served on the Board of the European Society of International Law and the International Advisory Panel for the American Law Institute’s Restatement Fourth, Foreign Relations Law of the United States.

She has held visiting professorships at Université Paris X Nanterre, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Leiden University, ESADE Law School, the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore, and Pepperdine University’s London programme. She is on editorial boards of the International & Comparative Law Quarterly, the Leiden Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, Oxford International Organizations, and the Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal.

She has extensive experience in international courts and tribunals. She served as the Special Assistant and Legal Officer to Judge Rosalyn Higgins GBE QC during her Presidency of the International Court of Justice (2006-2009) and, prior to that, as the Judicial Clerk to Judges Higgins and Owada (2004-2005). She was the Associate Legal Adviser to the Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (2005-2006) and an Associate Officer at United Nations Headquarters (2001-2003).

Within the Law School, Professor Webb has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Postgraduate Studies, and Director of Mooting. From January 2022, she is the Senior Tutor for the Law School.

Research interests

Professor Webb’s research interests are in Public International Law, in particular international courts, all aspects of the law of immunity, United Nations law, human rights, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. She is the author or co-author of 5 books, 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 30 chapters in edited collections, and the co-editor of 2 books.

Her publications include: The Right to a Fair Trial in International Law (OUP 2020, with Amal Clooney) with the accompanying travaux préparatoires to Article 14 of the ICCPR (OUP 2021), Oppenheim's International Law: United Nations (2017, with Rosalyn Higgins, Dapo Akande, Sandy Sivakumaran, and James Sloan), and International Judicial Integration and Fragmentation (2015).

Her treatise, The Law of State Immunity (2015, with Lady Hazel Fox QC) has been cited by the leading national courts in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and South Africa. Professor Webb is currently working on projects related to developing principles of the law of state immunity for the current era, state responsibility for modern slavery, and the law and policy of disintegration.