Tom is a generalist international lawyer, whose research interests include boundaries, law of the sea, use of force, investment protection, international trade, procedure of international courts and tribunals, legal history, law and technology, and artificial intelligence and the law.
His books include Recognition of States (1999), Admission of States to the United Nations (2009), Aggression against Ukraine: Territory, Responsibility, and International Law (2015), On the Path to AI: Law's prophecies and the conceptual foundations of the machine learning age (with Damon Wischik, 2020), and Arbitration: A Very Short Introduction (with Tom Schultz, 2021).
He is a contributing author of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law and is editor of the sections of the forthcoming 10th edition of Oppenheim’s International Law on recognition of states and governments, state succession, neutrality, decolonization, and trade and customs unions.
Other forthcoming works include: "Patents, Competition & Security: Commercializing Innovation in the Global Ecosystem for 5G & IoT," with F Scott Kieff in Jonathan M Barnett & Sean M O'Connor (eds.), 5G and Beyond: Intellectual Property and Competition Policy in the Internet of Things (forthcoming, Cambridge UP, 2023); and a monograph addressing current problems in the settlement of disputes under the law of the sea (expected completion 2024).
Tom served 2016-2019 as a research exercise leader of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence addressing artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons. In 2022-2023, he served as a supervisor for the Centre's MSt in AI Ethics and Society. He was a designee of the United States to the roster of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (2021) and is an alternate designee of the United Kingdom to the roster of arbitrators of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (2022).
In 2023, among other speaking events, Tom addressed audiences at the Davos World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference, and the Yalta European Strategy Summit (Kyiv) on issues arising from Russia's aggression against Ukraine. He also recently has addressed current issues of nuclear non-proliferation and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at events coordinated by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC). He served in 2022 as lead counsel to a Reparations Study Group convened by the New Lines Institute, in which capacity he was lead author of the Group's Multilateral Action Model on Reparations for Ukraine: https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/20221031-MAMOR-Doc-w-toc-NLISP.pdf
Tom's undergraduate degree is in European history (Harvard, summa cum laude); his JD is from Yale; and he did his PhD (law) at Cambridge as a Wolfson student.