Stephen Fietta KC founded Fietta LLP in 2015. He has practised at the forefront of public international law, whether within government or private practice, for more than 20 years and is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading public international law practitioners. He regularly advises sovereign clients with respect to high-profile and sensitive public international law issues, including as regards sovereignty disputes, the law of the sea (including maritime boundary delimitation), international environmental law, human rights, treaty interpretation and international investment law.
Stephen has advised on cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights and multiple domestic courts. He has appeared in more than 40 pending and decided arbitration cases under the World Bank (ICSID), UNCITRAL and other rules, a number of which have featured ground-breaking awards on jurisdiction, merits and/or damages.
Before establishing Fietta in 2015, Stephen co-founded the world’s first specialist public international law firm (Volterra Fietta) in 2011. Prior to that, he was a partner specialising in public international law at a leading US and global law firm. Both of those practices were top-ranked at the time. Stephen regularly manages large teams of lawyers (including specialist or domestic co-counsel), experts and witnesses in multiple jurisdictions.
Stephen is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at King’s College, London. In January 2015, Stephen was awarded the Smit-Lowenfield Prize by the International Arbitration Club of New York for the best article published globally in the field of international arbitration, entitled Public International Law, Investment Treaties and Commercial Arbitration: an emerging system of complementarity? Stephen has co-authored (with Dr Robin Cleverly) A Practioners guide to Maritime Delimitation, published in March 2016, which has subsequently been cited before both the ICJ and ITLOS.
Stephen’s full curriculum vitae is available here.