Neil Kaplan and Chiann Bao hosted Sir Christopher Greenwood GBE CMG QC. The recording is available here.

Sir Christopher Greenwood GBE CMG QC read law at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA (Law) (First Class Hons) in 1976, LLB (International Law) (First Class Hons) in 1977, and became an MA in 1981.  As an undergraduate, he was elected President of the Cambridge Union in 1976.   Elected a Fellow of Magdalene College in 1978, he taught law there and at the Cambridge University Law Faculty for nearly twenty years.  He was appointed Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics in 1996, where he remained until becoming a Judge of the International Court of Justice in 2009.  He returned to Magdalene College as Master in October 2020.

Sir Christopher was called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1978 and appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1999.  He became a Bencher of Middle Temple in 2003 and was Reader in 2020.  He was a member of Lamb Building from 1984 to 1995 and of Essex Court Chambers from 1995 to 2009.  During his years as a barrister he regularly appeared as counsel before the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the English courts, arbitral and other tribunals.

On 6 November 2008, Sir Christopher was elected a judge at the International Court of Justice, where he served from February 2009 to February 2018, when he joined the Arbitrators at 24 Lincoln’s Inn Fields as an arbitrator specializing in public international law, including investor-State disputes.  He has extensive experience as an arbitrator both in inter-State and investor-State cases.  He sits as a Member of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and is a Member of the ICSID Panel of Arbitrators.  He has acted as President of twenty arbitration tribunals or ICSID ad hoc committees, as well as sitting as a Member of several other tribunals.

Sir Christopher was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 2002 and knighted in 2009 for services to international law.   In 2018 he was created GBE (Knight Grand Cross) for his services to international justice.

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