John Dugard is a South African professor of international law. He has served as Judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and as a Special Rapporteur for both the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission. His main academic specialisations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law.

John earned his BA in 1956 and LLB in 1958  at Stellenbosch University and a LL.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1980. From 1975 to 1977, John was the Dean and a Professor of Law at the University of Witwatersrand  and Director of the University of Witwatersrand’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies, “a research centre committed to the promotion of Human Rights in South Africa”, from 1978 to 1990. He has held visiting professorships at Princeton, Duke, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania and the University of New South Wales in Australia and holds honorary degrees in Law from the Universities of Natal, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.

In 1998 he was appointed Chair in Public International Law at Leiden University in The Netherlands and as director of the Advanced LL.M. programme in Public International Law. He is currently a door tenant at 20 Essex Street Chambers in London, specialising in Public International Law.