Simon Chesterman

Simon Chesterman is an Australian legal academic and writer who is currently a vice provost at the National University of Singapore and dean of the NUS College.

Chesterman's play "Everything Before the 'But' Is a Lie" was performed at Oxford's Burton Taylor Studio in 2000.

It was directed by Rosamund Pike, who was then an undergraduate student at Oxford.

Before publication as a book, the work had originally won a 2000 Dasturzada Dr Jal Pavry Memorial Prize for "best thesis in international relations".

One review article of this book by Nico Krisch in the European Journal of International Law described Chesterman's book as being pessimistic about humanitarian intervention, when compared to his contemporary Nicholas J. Wheeler who is more optimistic about establishing an international framework for "ideal humanitarian intervention".

Chesterman does not believe that "ideal humanitarian intervention" exists; according to Krisch, he instead belongs to the school of thought that argues that states should "justify their action based on political arguments" rather than relying on a "[humanitarian] recognition of exception to the use of force".

Though the intervention would go against international law, it would be in Chesterman's words, a "venial sin".

As Krisch analyses, Wheeler also raises "plausible" opposition to this – it would create a "perception" that "powerful states" could ignore international law whenever they wished, pushing other countries to treat international law "equally cavalierly".

Noting Chesterman's position, Krisch writes, "law loses much of its weight if its deviation from moral standards is openly admitted and other ways of justification are recognised."

Chesterman further argues in Just War or Just Peace that the enforcement of the Iraqi no-fly zones and the Operation Deny Flight (the no-fly zone in Kosovo) went outside the framework of the United Nations, but Krisch calls this claim "overstated".

Nevertheless, the book received an American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit.

Chesterman is a founding editor of the Asian Journal of International Law, published from 2011 by Cambridge University Press.

He is on the editorial boards of other journals including Global Governance, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Security Dialogue, and The Hague Journal on the Rule of Law.

As Dean of NUS Law, Chesterman oversaw the first review of its curriculum in more than a decade.

Changes introduced included greater exposure to the legal systems of Asia and a grade-free first semester.

Chesterman also launched the most ambitious research agenda in the history of the faculty.

This entailed the creation of a series of new centres: the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business, the Centre for Banking & Finance Law, the Centre for Maritime Law, the Centre for Legal Theory, and the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law.

This was said to be aimed at making Singapore a "thought leader" in legal research.

Fundraising efforts included support from Singapore's Ministry of Law for the new research centres, as well as $21m to name the Centre for Law & Business after former Law Minister Edmund W. Barker.

Four new endowed chairs were established: the Sat Pal Khattar Chair in Tax Law, the Amaladass Chair in Criminal Justice, the MPA Chair in Maritime Law, and the Saw Swee Hock Centennial Professorship.

He was the dean of NUS Faculty of Law from 2012 to 2022.

He is also senior director of AI governance at AI Singapore, editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and co-president of the Law Schools Global League.

A Rhodes Scholar, Chesterman succeeded Tan Cheng Han as Dean of the NUS Faculty of Law on 1 January 2012.

Prior to January 2012, he was global professor and director of the New York University School of Law Singapore programme.

His research concerns international law, public authority, data protection, and the regulation of artificial intelligence.

He is critical of what he sees as the changing and increasingly expanding role of intelligence agencies.

Chesterman is the author or editor of twenty books and four novels.

From 2012 to 2017, he served as secretary-general of the Asian Society of International Law.

Chesterman attended Camberwell Grammar School and graduated with first class honours in arts and law from the University of Melbourne, where he won the Supreme Court Prize as the top student, and was editor of the Melbourne University Law Review.

He obtained a Rhodes Scholarship and completed his doctorate in international law at the University of Oxford under the supervision of the late Sir Ian Brownlie.

He also holds a diploma in Chinese language from the Beijing International Studies University.

In 2013, Chesterman was appointed as a member of Singapore's Data Protection Advisory Committee, and in 2016 joined the United Nations University Council.

In September 2013, NUS Law convened the first ever Global Law Deans' Forum of the International Association of Law Schools.

The meeting adopted the Singapore Declaration on Global Standards and Outcomes of a Legal Education, which was intended to offer a "common language" for global legal education.

Under Chesterman's leadership, NUS Law rose from 22nd in the QS World Rankings in 2013 to 10th in 2021, in the process overtaking Hong Kong University's faculty of law to become the top-ranked law school in Asia.

Chesterman was appointed as dean of NUS Law for a fourth term in 2021, and will serve until 30 June 2023, after Professor Hans Tjio, who was appointed to be the next dean in July 2021, relinquished the position for medical reasons.

In the same year, he launched an initiative to increase diversity in the law school by shortlisting top students from all of Singapore's schools and increasing the technology component of the curriculum.

His doctoral thesis as a Rhodes Scholar, became one of his first books, ''Just War or Just Peace?

Humanitarian Intervention and International Law''.

A push to increase experiential learning and ethics included the introduction of a mandatory pro bono scheme in 2014 and the creation of a Centre for Pro Bono & Clinical Legal Education in 2017.