Neil Kaplan CBE QC SBS and Chiann Bao hosted Robert Spano. The recording is available here.

Robert Spano is the President of the European Court of Human Rights. He has authored numerous papers and publications on the topics of human rights law, constitutional law, the interpretation of statutes, the evolution of the Convention system, and criminal procedure. He is often described as an expert on the interplay between the internet and human rights.

Having obtained a degree in Law from the University of Iceland in 1997, Robert Spano worked as a Deputy District Court Judge and Legal Adviser to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. In 2000, he graduated from the University of Oxford with distinction in European and Comparative law and two academic awards for his achievements. In his early career, Robert worked inter alia at the Ministry of Justice, and as an academic at the University of Iceland, Editor of the Law Review, District Court Judge, and Deputy to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. In 2012 and 2013, he was working as an Independent Expert to the Lanzarote Committee of the Council of Europe, an Icelandic Member of the European Committee on Crime Problems, and an ad hoc judge at the EFTA Court. Having been elected a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, he began his nine-year mandate on 1 November 2013, and served as Vice-President of the Court from May 2019 until May 2020 when he became President of the Court.

Find out more about Neil Kaplan, Chiann Bao and the In conversation with Neil series here, and browse past ‘conversations’ here.