Stephen Humphreys

About/Bio

Stephen Humphreys is a Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics. He is a Commissioner on the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law. He was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C and Academic Advisor to the International Bar Association’s Task Force on Climate Justice and Human Rights. He was formerly Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva, and, before that, Senior Officer at the Open Society Institute’s Justice Initiative in New York and Budapest. He has conducted policy work on climate change and in human rights in a variety of fora. His research interests include international legal and critical theory; rule of law; law and development; climate change; the laws of war; and transnational legal processes. He holds a PhD from Cambridge and a Master’s degree in law from SOAS. His publications include Theatre of the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and the edited volume, Human Rights and Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Recently Published

1.5 at the ICJ

The ICJ’s climate change Advisory Opinion of July 2025 capped a year in which global temperatures averaged 1.53°C above pre-industrial levels. In this context, the Court’s strong endorsement of the Paris Agreement’s more stringent 1.5°C limit is remarkable. The Court made three broad statements on 1.5. First, it recast the Paris objective of ‘pursuing efforts to limit…

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A Swiss human rights budget?

In his vigorous, thoroughly readable, partly dissenting opinion to the recent ECtHR climate change ruling (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland), Judge Eicke wonders whether the court has ‘tried to run before it could walk’ (para. 68). In particular, he is exercised by the Court’s attempt to apply a set of criteria by which…

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