John Swords joins the Blavatnik School of Government as a visiting practitioner and his Fellowship is with both ELAC and the Institute of Technology and Justice. In parallel to his time at Oxford, John will join Yale as a senior fellow for the rule of law in October.  Immediately prior to this Fellowship, John was the NATO Legal Adviser and director of NATO’s Office of Legal Affairs at its HQ from 2020 until 2026. In that capacity, he was the chief legal adviser to the NATO Secretary General, the International Staff and the 32 nations in the North Atlantic Council. During that eventful six-year period John founded and chaired the Annual Meeting of Allied Legal Advisers (AMALA), convening the most senior MFA and MOD lawyers from the 32 Allies’ capitals (in addition to their counterparts from the Indo-Pacific 4 partner countries) to discuss and “deconflict” on the most significant legal issues confronting the Alliance. In addition to advising on operational and geopolitical matters, John oversaw Finland’s and Sweden’s accession processes to the Alliance and he sat on NATO’s Innovation Board. Prior to NATO, John was a Senior Civil Servant in the UK’s Government Legal Department, advising the Ministry of Defence (where he was head of the Operational and International Humanitarian Law Division) and, before that, was at the Home Office (where he advised on policing, immigration and related national security matters).