Professor Kevin Jon Heller

Research Themes
Biography
In addition to being a Professor in the law school, Kevin Jon Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam. He was previously Professor of Criminal Law at SOAS, University of London, and Associate Professor and Reader at Melbourne Law School. He holds a PhD in law from Leiden University and a JD with distinction from Stanford Law School.
Kevin’s books include The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (Oxford University Press, 2013) (edited with Gerry Simpson), and the Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law (Stanford University Press, 2009) (with Markus Dubber). He is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2019, and co-writing a book with Sam Moyn (Yale) provisionally entitled The Vietnam War and the Transformation of International Law.
Kevin has been involved in the International Criminal Court’s negotiations over the crime of aggression, worked as Human Rights Watch’s external legal advisor on the trial of Saddam Hussein, served for three years as one of Radovan Karadzic's formally-appointed legal associates at the ICTY, and was the plaintiffs’ expert witness concerning medical experimentation in Salim v Mitchell, a successful Alien Tort Statute case against the psychologists who designed and administered the CIA’s torture program. He consults regularly with a variety of UN organisations (such as the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic) and human rights groups (such as Al-Haq and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights) and is a permanent member of the international-law blog Opinio Juris, which is sponsored by the International Commission of Jurists.
Kevin is an Academic Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London and serves on the four-person Advisory Board of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales.
Recent news
In the Media
Past events
The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law will be launched by Professor Simon Bronitt, Head of School and Dean of Sydney Law School, University of Sydney.
Books & edited collections
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Heller, Kevin Jon, et al. (2019) Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Forthcoming]
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Heller, Kevin Jon (2013) The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Paperback Edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Refereed journal articles
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Heller, Kevin Jon (2018) ’Specially-Affected States and the Formation of Custom'. American Journal of International Law, (112) 2, pp 191-243.
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Heller, Kevin Jon (2018) 'What is an International Crime? (A Revisionist History)'. Harvard International Law Journal, (58) 2, pp 353-420.
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Heller, Kevin Jon (2016) 'Radical Complementarity'. Journal of International Criminal Justice, (14) 3, pp 637-665.
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Heller, Kevin Jon (2015) 'Disguising a Military Object as a Civilian Object: Prohibited Perfidy or Permissible Ruse of War?'. International Law Studies, (91), pp 517-539.
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Heller, Kevin Jon (2013) 'The Taylor Sentencing Judgment: A Critical Analysis'. Journal of International Criminal Justice, (11) 4, pp 835-855