Prof William Schabas

Professor of International Law

William Schabas

  • School Faculty of Business and Law

  • Department Law and Social Sciences

  • Location London

Research activities

Professor Schabas is specialised in international human rights law and international criminal law. He has published a large body of scholarly work in these areas including more than twenty books in the areas of racial discrimination, genocide, capital punishment, the International Criminal Court, the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.


Current Teaching

In addition to teaching on the international law courses offered at Middlesex, Professor Schabas supervises many doctoral students. Since he joined the Middlesex University faculty, in 2011, he has supervised more than thirty doctoral students through to completion. Twelve of the theses have now been published by major international law publishing houses.


Biography

Professor William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He joined the Middlesex University faculty in 2011 after a distinguished career as a practising lawyer (member of the Québec bar) and academic, have previously been professor of law at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the University of Galway.

Professor Schabas is also emeritus professor at Leiden University and the University of Galway, honorary chairman of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, and invited visiting scholar at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po). Prof. Schabas is a ‘door tenant’ at the chambers of 9 Bedford Row, in London.

He has appeared as counsel before several international and national courts and tribunals including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Schabas was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2007. He has been awarded the Vespasian V. Pella Medal for International Criminal Justice of the Association internationale de droit pénal, the Gold Medal in the Social Sciences of the Royal Irish Academy, and he holds several honorary doctorates.

Professor Schabas served as one of the commissioners of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, from 2002 to 2004. In 2014, he was appointed by the president of the United Nations Human Rights Council as chairman of the International commission of inquiry to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014. From 2009 to 2011, he was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights.

Professor Schabas has prepared the quinquennial reports of the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the status of capital punishment for 2010, 2015 and 2020.

Publications

View publications