Clive Stafford Smith

Awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws by the University in 2016, Clive Stafford Smith is the founder and Director of Reprieve.

A graduate of Columbia Law School in New York, Clive worked as a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, focusing on death penalty and civil rights cases.

In 1999, Clive set up Reprieve, a charity providing free legal and investigative support to some of the world’s most vulnerable people – to help those facing execution around the world, and those victimised by states’ abusive counter-terror policies, including torture and extrajudicial killing. In 2001, Clive sued for access to the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Believing the camp was an affront to democracy and the law, his goal was to close Guantánamo. Clive has helped secure the release of 69 prisoners from the camp, including every British prisoner.

Today, Clive oversees Reprieve’s casework alongside representing prisoners on death row. He has represented over 300 prisoners facing the death penalty in America, preventing the death penalty in all but six cases.

Clive has received an OBE for Humanitarian Services and an International Bar Association’s Human Rights Award. It was for Clive’s unswerving belief in justice and the championing of human rights that he was chosen to receive an honorary degree.