Law, Leadership, Literature and the Pursuit of Justice: A Conversation with Philippe Sands and Mayo Moran

What does it mean to lead through law at a time when established norms and institutions are under strain?

Join renowned international lawyer, author and scholar Philippe Sands KC and Professor Mayo Moran, the Irving and Rosalie Abella Chair in Justice and Equality, for a wide-ranging conversation about law, leadership and the pursuit of justice.

Drawing on their work and experiences, the conversation will explore the role lawyers can play in confronting injustice, holding power to account and strengthening the institutions on which the rule of law depends.

Philippe Sands KC is also curating Rupture/Justice, a strand at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Through stories from the courtroom, history, scholarship and public life, Sands and Moran will reflect on the choices lawyers face when law, politics and questions of justice collide, and what those moments can teach us about judgment, responsibility and leadership.

Philippe Sands KC

Philippe Sands KC is Professor of the Public Understanding of Law at University College London and Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a practising barrister at 11 King’s Bench Walk, where he appears as counsel before international courts and tribunals. He also sits as an arbitrator in international investment disputes and on the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and served as a CAS arbitrator at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

He is the author of Lawless World (2005), Torture Team (2008) and numerous academic books on international law, and writes occasionally for publications including the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer and The New York Times.

His recent books include the Lviv trilogy: East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (2016), which won the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize, the 2017 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the 2018 Prix Montaigne; The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020); and 38 Londres Street: On Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia (2026). He is also the author of The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (2022).

Sands served as President of English PEN from 2018 to 2023 and as a member of the Board of the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature from 2018 to 2024.

Mayo Moran

Professor Mayo Moran is the Irving and Rosalie Abella Chair in Justice and Equality at the University of Toronto’s Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2006 to 2014 and as Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College from 2014 to 2024. Her academic and policy work focuses on redress for historic injustice, reparative justice, restitution, equality and legal theory.

Her most recent book, Making Amends for Historic Wrongs: Reparative Justice and the Problem of the Past, was published by Oxford University Press in 2026.