Devika Hovell
About/Bio
Devika Hovell is an Associate Professor of Public International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and a Master of Laws from New York University, where she was awarded the George Colin Award. Devika graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours. She served as an Associate to Justice Kenneth Hayne at the High Court of Australia, and as judicial clerk at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. She was formerly a lecturer at the University of New South Wales and Director of the international law project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW. Her book on the Power of Process was published by Oxford University Press in 2016. She is a member of EJIL's Editorial Board.
Recently Published
Welcoming Nehal Bhuta as Editor
September 24, 2024
Marko Milanovic
Dapo Akande
Diane Desierto
Devika Hovell
Sarah Nouwen
Joseph Weiler
We are happy to announce that Nehal Bhuta will be joining us as the fifth co-editor of the blog. Nehal will be well known to our readers, especially because he had already edited the blog, back in its early days. Nehal holds the Chair of Public International Law at University of Edinburgh and is Co-Director of the Edinburgh…
Twelve Years On: An Exceptional Chemical Weapons Tribunal
December 11, 2023
Devika Hovell
It is almost two years since a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council unilaterally decided to wage war against an independent European state. What response might we have expected in that time? More particularly, how might we have expected the international community to respond? Now let’s imagine we are a decade on. Twelve long years…
Response to the Letter to the Editors Regarding the Publication of a Symposium based on Papers Presented at an IDF Conference
We are grateful for this letter. It raises important and difficult issues. These are issues that must be identified, aired, discussed, specified and further discussed. This letter has spurred such a process. The symposium that the letter objects to focused on the question of the identification of custom in international humanitarian law. It consisted…
Popular articles by Devika Hovell
Council at War: Russia, Ukraine and the UN Security Council
February 25, 2022
Devika Hovell
‘It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war’, Ukraine’s representative told the UN Security Council on Wednesday this week. He was interrupted by the current President of the UN Security Council who clarified ‘this isn’t called a war, this is called a special military operation in the Donbas’. In this moment, the Ukrainean representative…
Response to the Letter to the Editors Regarding the Publication of a Symposium based on Papers Presented at an IDF Conference
We are grateful for this letter. It raises important and difficult issues. These are issues that must be identified, aired, discussed, specified and further discussed. This letter has spurred such a process. The symposium that the letter objects to focused on the question of the identification of custom in international humanitarian law. It consisted…
Punishing Sanctions: A Call to Arms Against Fortress America
February 25, 2025
Devika Hovell
Being an international lawyer can sometimes feel like being a librarian in the middle of a riot. You are deeply invested in the idea that there are rules – impeccable legal rules – that, if followed, would make the world a better, more orderly, place. You clutch well-thumbed and thoroughly annotated copies of the Nicaragua case,…