Rosalyn Cohen Higgins, Lady Higgins, (born 2 June 1937) is a British judge who was a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1995 to 2009. She was the first female judge elected to the ICJ. Higgins was elected to a three-year term as its president in 2006.
Born to a Jewish family in 1937 as Rosalyn Cohen, she married the politician Terence Higgins in 1961. Her husband was created a life peer in 1997; consequently, she became Baroness Higgins or Lady Higgins.
Higgins studied at Girton College, Cambridge, receiving her BA degree in 1959 and an LLB degree in 1962. She was a Harkness Fellow between 1959 and 1961. She later proceeded to a MA degree. She continued her studies at Yale Law School, earning a JSD degree in 1962.
Following her education, Higgins was a practising barrister, and became a Queen's Counsel (QC; since 2022, KC) in 1986, and is a bencher of the Inner Temple. She served on the UN Human Rights Committee for 14 years. Her role as member of the leading body for supervising implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights earned her respect for her diligence and competence. She resigned from the Human Rights Committee on her election to the International Court of Justice in 1995, and sat as a member of the Court until 2009. In
February 2006 she was elected president of the Court for a term of three years, with Judge Awn Al-Khasawneh of Jordan elected vice-president.
Her professional appointments include:
Specialist in International Law, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1963–1974
Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics, 1974–1978
Professor of International Law, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1978–1981
Professor of International Law, University of London (London School of Economics), 1981–1995
Professor of International Law and Human rights, Leiden University, 2009–2010
Vice-president, British Institute of International and Comparative Law
Member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
Higgins is the author of several influential works on international law, including Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (1994). Despite delivering many balanced judgements in different cases, Higgins's dissenting opinion in the ICJ's advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or the Use of Nuclear Weapons has been widely criticised by some legal scholars, on the grounds that it provides sovereign states with an unjustifiable amount of latitude in resort to the use of nuclear weapons in times of armed conflict.
In October 2009, she was appointed adviser on International Law, to the British government's inquiry into the Iraq war, headed by Sir John Chilcot.
Higgins is a member of the Institut de droit international. In 1995, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) "for services to international law", and in the 2019 New Year Honours promoted to Dame Grand Cross of the same Order (GBE) "for services to International Law and Justice". In 1988, she was appointed a Knight of the French Order of Academic Palms, and in 2007 she was awarded the Balzan Prize for International Law since 1945, cited for "her outstanding contributions to the development of international law since the Second World War and her role as an academic, judge and Court
President".The Balzan research funding supported the project that producedOppenheim's International Law: United Nations, published in 2017.
Her competence has been recognised by many academic institutions, having received at least thirteen honorary doctorates, as well as the Yale Law School Award of Merit and also the Manley-O.-Hudson medal.