The Right Honourable Lord Collins of Mapesbury ’65 LL.M.

Lord Collins of Mapesbury ’65 LL.M. (Lawrence Collins) was appointed by the Queen in April 2009 to serve as a Law Lord, and then to become one of the first justices on the United Kingdom Supreme Court, established in October 2009. He spent the previous two years on the English Court of Appeal.

Lord Collins read law at the University of Cambridge, before receiving an LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School in 1965. In 1971, he became a partner in the law firm of Herbert Smith, where he specialized in international commercial litigation. He was appointed a deputy High Court judge and a practicing Queen’s Counsel in 1997. As Queen’s Counsel, he appeared before the House of Lords in the Pinochet extradition case. After leaving the law firm in 2000, he became the first solicitor to be appointed a High Court judge (as Mr. Justice Lawrence Collins) directly from private practice. He was knighted that same year. He was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2007 as Lord Justice Lawrence Collins.

Lord Collins is the author of numerous books and articles on international law, and he is the general editor of Dicey, Morris & Collins on the Conflict of Laws (Sweet & Maxwell: 2006), currently in its 14th edition. He is also a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, and a visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Institut de Droit International.