Meet Dapo Akande, Nigerian-trained lawyer elected ICJ judge

Professor Dapo Akande, a Nigerian-trained lawyer who has been elected as a judge of the International Court of Justice, has built an international career spanning nearly three decades in public international law, legal scholarship and international dispute settlement.

Akande, who was aelected to the ICJ on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, will serve a nine-year term at the United Nations’ principal judicial organ, becoming the first UK judge to occupy a seat on the court in nine years.

According to his profile on the University of Oxford website, Akande is the Chichele Professor of Public International Law at the university’s Faculty of Law, a Fellow of All Souls College and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

He is also a member of the United Nations International Law Commission and a barrister at Essex Court Chambers.

Akande’s academic career has included visiting professorships in the United States, Europe and Australia, including at Yale Law School. He was also the 2015 Sir Ninian Stephen Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne Law School’s Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law.

The Oxford professor specialises in several areas of international law, including the law of international organisations, armed conflict, international criminal law, cyber operations and international dispute settlement.

His academic publications include Oppenheim’s International Law: The United Nations, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, which received the 2019 Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law.

He is also co-editor of The Oxford Guide to International Humanitarian Law (2020), Human Rights and 21st Century Challenges: Poverty, Conflict and the Environment (2020), and Practitioners Guide to the Application of Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict (2016).

Akande was also a member of the International Group of Experts that prepared the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations, published in 2017.

His research leadership includes convening the Oxford Process on International Law Protections in Cyberspace. Between 2012 and 2017, he was Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations.

From 2014 to 2019, he also helped lead a European Research Council-funded project titled “The Individualisation of War: Reconfiguring the Ethics, Law and Politics of Armed Conflict”.

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Beyond academia, Akande has been involved in international legal proceedings, acting as an advocate, counsel, adviser or expert before several international tribunals.

These include the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the European Court of Human Rights, the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Criminal Court and World Trade Organization panels.

He has also provided legal advice in proceedings in England, including before the UK Supreme Court, as well as in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

In 2024, he was designated to the panel of arbitrators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes by the President of the World Bank, acting as chair of the organisation’s Administrative Council. He was subsequently appointed to ad hoc committees handling applications for the annulment of ICSID awards.

His advisory work has extended to governments across all continents and international organisations, including the United Nations, African Union Commission, Commonwealth Secretariat, Council of Europe and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Akande has also served on several international advisory bodies, including the United States Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law, the UK Ministry of Defence AI Ethics Advisory Panel and the International Committee of the Red Cross Global Advisory Board on Digital Threats During Conflict.

He was the founding editor of EJIL:Talk!, the scholarly blog of the European Journal of International Law, and has served on the editorial or advisory boards of several international legal journals.

His other professional and institutional roles have included serving as a trustee of the Rhodes Trust, counsellor of the American Society of International Law and trustee of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

Following his election to the International Court of Justice, Akande said he was honoured by the confidence placed in him by member states and pledged to serve independently and impartially.

“I pledge to serve with independence and to deciding cases on the basis of a faithful and impartial application of the law,” he said in a statement published by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on Tuesday.

He added that he looked forward to contributing to the court’s work in resolving disputes through peaceful means.