Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (2005)
Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (2008) East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016)
The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (2022)
Sands served as President of
English PEN[5] from February 2018 to April 2023.
Early life
Sands was born in London on 17 October 1960 to
Jewish parents. He was educated at
University College School[6] in Hampstead, London, and read Law at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, attaining a
BA degree in 1982 and going on to achieve first-class honours in the
LLM course a year later. After completing his postgraduate studies at Cambridge, Sands spent a year as a visiting scholar at
Harvard Law School.
claims relating to the use of force, allegations of torture, genocide, self-determination and other violations of human rights;
claims relating to violations of international criminal law.
Sands has acted as counsel in more than two dozen cases at the
International Court of Justice, including the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion (counsel for the
Solomon Islands);[11] the Georgia v. Russia dispute (counsel for Georgia);[12]Whaling in the Antarctic (counsel for Australia);[13]Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965;[14] and Application of the Genocide Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide[15] (counsel for The Gambia). He has also been instructed in inter-State arbitrations, including the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration (counsel for
Mauritius) and the
dispute between the Philippines and China over
maritime jurisdiction in the South China Sea (counsel for the Philippines).[16]
Prior to accepting appointments as
ICSID arbitrator (since 2007), Sands acted as counsel in
ICSID and other investment cases (including Tradex, Waste Management and Vivendi).[17] Sands now sits as arbitrator in investment disputes and in sports disputes (
CAS).
In 2005, Sands' book Lawless World catalysed legal and public debate in the UK on the legality of the
2003 Iraq War. The book addresses a range of topics including the
Pinochet trial in London, the creation of the
International Criminal Court, the
War on Terror and the establishment of the detention camp at
Guantánamo Bay. In the second edition of Lawless World (2006) Sands revealed that the then UK Prime Minister
Tony Blair had told President
George W. Bush that he would support US plans to invade Iraq before he had sought legal advice about the invasion's legality. Sands exposed a memorandum dated 31 January 2003 that described a two-hour meeting between Blair and Bush, during which Bush discussed the possibility of luring
Saddam Hussein's forces to shoot down a
Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, an act that would cause Iraq to be in breach of UN
Security Council Resolutions.[18]
The memo disclosed that Blair told Bush that he would support US plans to go to war in the absence of a second UN
Security Council Resolution, apparently contradicting an assurance given by Blair in the UK Parliament shortly afterwards on 25 February 2003.[19] Sands has maintained the view that there was no basis in international law for military action in
Iraq.[20]
Sands' 2008 book Torture Team sets out in detail the role of senior lawyers in the Bush administration in authorising torture (including so-called '
enhanced interrogation techniques' at
Guantánamo Bay). As a result of his work on Torture Team, Sands was invited to give oral and written evidence to the UK and Dutch Parliaments, as well as to the US House of Representatives and the US Senate:
UK House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs (1 June 2004)[21]
UK House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs (April 2006)[22]
US House of Representative Committee on the Judiciary (6 May 2008)[23]
US Senate Committee on the Judiciary (19 June 2008)[24]
In 2009,
Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker on Sands' reaction to news that Spanish jurist
Baltazar Garzon had received motions requesting that six former Bush officials might be charged with war crimes.[26]
From 2010 to 2012, Sands served as a Commissioner on the UK Government Commission on a Bill of Human Rights. The commission's Report was published in December 2012.[27] Sands and
Baroness Kennedy disagreed with the majority, and their dissent ("In Defence of Rights") was published in the London Review of Books.[28]
Sands and Kennedy expressed concern that support for a
UK Bill of Rights was motivated by a desire for the UK to withdraw from the
European Convention of Human Rights. Writing in The Guardian in May 2015, Sands argued that plans for a British Bill of Rights could leave some people in the UK with more rights than others and that this would be "inconsistent with the very notion of fundamental human rights, in which every human being has basic minimum rights."[29]
On 17 September 2015, Sands gave a public lecture at the
UK Supreme Court entitled "Climate Change and the Rule of Law: Adjudicating the Future in International Law".[30] He expressed the view that a ruling by an international judicial body, such as the
International Court of Justice, could help resolve the scientific dispute on climate change and be authoritative and legally dispositive.[31]
In December 2015, Sands (and two colleagues at
Matrix Chambers) drafted a Legal Opinion on the legality of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia for
Amnesty International,
Oxfam and
Saferworld. The Opinion concluded that by authorising the transfer of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the UK government was acting in breach of its obligations under the
Arms Trade Treaty, the EU Common Position on Arms Exports and the UK's Consolidated Criteria on Arms Exports.[32]
In November 2020, a panel of international lawyers chaired by Sands and
Florence Mumba started drafting a proposed law criminalising
ecocide, the destruction of ecosystems.[34]
Sands frequently comments on issues of international law and is a contributor to
BBC programmes,
Sky News,
CNN,
Al Jazeera and national radio and TV stations around the world.[39]
His written work has formed the basis for four staged productions exploring the public and historical impact of international law:
Called to Account, a staged inquiry into the legal issues surrounding the
Iraq War (performed at
Tricycle Theatre in April 2007);[40]
A Song of Good and Evil (performed at
South Bank's
Purcell Room on 29–30 November 2014,[44] Stockholm's
Berwaldhallen on 14 January 2015,[45] Nuremberg Courtroom 600 at the invitation of the German Government to mark 70th anniversary of the opening day of the
Nuremberg Trials on 21 November 2015,[46] and
Montauban's Théâtre Olympe de Gouges on 28 November 2015).[47] It has also been performed at
Kings Place in London,[48] and in Australia, Istanbul, Brussels, The Hague and New York.
Sands' book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016) has been translated into twenty languages. It formed the basis for the documentary My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did.[51] The film is directed by David Evans and premiered in April 2015 at the
Tribeca Film Festival.[52] It was released in the US on 6 November 2015 and in the UK on 20 November 2015.[53][54]
Sands wrote the script and appears in the film alongside two sons of prominent Nazi officials,
Niklas Frank (son of
Hans Frank, the Governor-General of occupied Poland) and Horst von Wächter (son of
Otto Wächter, the Governor of Kraków in Poland and Galicia in Ukraine). The documentary, which explores the relationship between the sons and their fathers, won the Yad Vashem Chairman's Award at the
Jerusalem Film Festival[55] and was nominated in the Best Documentary category at the
Stockholm Film Festival[56] and at the
Evening Standard British Film Awards.[57]
In 2018, Sands wrote and presented the
BBC Radio 4 documentary Intrigue: The Ratline, about the disappearance of senior Nazi
Otto Wächter, investigating the "
ratlines" by which he escaped justice.[58] Sands has since published a book on this topic.[59]
In 2020, Sands published The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive.[60]
In 2022, he published The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy[4] about
Chagos, where "a secret decision was taken to offer the US a base at
Diego Garcia ... create a new colony (the '
British Indian Ocean Territory') and deport the entire local population."[61] As summarised by The Observer: "The Chagossians were forced from their archipelago in the Indian Ocean in the 1970s, and Britain still refuses to hand it back. Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands relates the wider tragedy of the scandal with nerve and precision."[62]
Sands lives in North London with his wife and three children.[6] In a 2016 interview for The Guardian, he asserted: "I want to be treated as Philippe Sands individual, not Philippe Sands Brit, Londoner or Jew."[70]
^Prinzipien, Internationale Akademie Nürnberger.
"A Song of Good and Evil". International Nuremberg Principles Academy. Archived from
the original on 15 March 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2016.