Nationality
United States of America
Year of election
2021

Function(s)

  • Professor of International Law;
  • Member U.N. International Law Commission;
  • Arbitrator.

Area(s) of Expertise

  • International Dispute Settlement
  • State Responsibility
  • Law of the Sea
  • Foreign Investment

Biography

Sean D. Murphy is the Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Since 2012, he has been a Member of the U.N. International Law Commission, which appointed him as Special Rapporteur for Crimes against Humanity. From 1987 to 1998, he served in the U.S. Department of State Office of the Legal Adviser working inter alia on matters relating to international dispute settlement, foreign investment, the law of the sea, and international humanitarian law. Since entering academia, Professor Murphy has served as counsel, arbitrator or ad hoc judge, including at the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, ICSID, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the International Criminal Court. As counsel, he has represented numerous governments, such as Armenia, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Suriname, Uganda, and the United States. Professor Murphy has lectured widely on subjects of international law, inter alia for the U.N. Regional Training Courses in Africa, Asia, and South America, for the International Law Seminar for African Universities in Ghana, and for the Summer Academy on the Continental Shelf in Tanzania. A former President of the American Society of International Law, Professor Murphy has published numerous books and articles on international law, such as his treatise on Principles of International Law (3d ed. 2018), his Hague Academy of International Law lectures on International Law relating to Islands (2016), and his book Litigating War: Arbitration of Civil Injury by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (2013) (with Snider and Kidane). He served for a decade on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law and is a former President of the American Society of International Law.

Selected publications

  • Law of U.S. Foreign Relations (Oxford Univ. Press forthcoming 2022) (with Swaine)
  • Temporal Issues Relating to BIT Dispute Resolution, in 36(2) ICSID Review: Foreign Investment Law Journal (forthcoming 2021)
  • Provisional Application of Treaties and Other Topics: The Seventy-Second Session of the International Law Commission, in 115 American Journal of International Law 671 (2021)
  • International Law: Cases and Materials (West Academic 7th ed. 2019) (with Damrosch)
  • Principles of International Law (West Academic 3d ed. 2018)
  • Public International Law in a Nutshell (West Academic 6th ed. 2018) (with Buergenthal)
  • U.S. Foreign Relations Law: Cases, Materials and Practice Exercises (West Academic 5th ed. 2017) (with Swaine & Wuerth)
  • International Law Relating to Islands (Hague Academy/Brill Nijhoff) (2017) (also at 386 Recueil des cours de l’Académie de Droit International de la Haye 9 (2017))
  • Litigating War: Arbitration of Civil Injury by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (Oxford Univ. Press 2013) (with Kidane and Snider)
  • Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order (Univ. Pennsylvania Press 1996)
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