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Biography
Sue Arrowsmith KC (hon) is Professor Emerita of Public Procurement Law and Policy at the University of Nottingham, where she was formerly Director of the Public Procurement Research Group (1998-2020) and of the postgraduate Executive programme in Public Procurement Law and Policy (LLM/Diploma/Certificate) (2009-2020). She was formerly a Tutor (1987-88), Lecturer (1988-1991) and Professor (1991-1998) at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and Achilles Professor at the University of Nottingham (1998-2020). She has a first class honours degree in jurisprudence from Oxford University (Somerville College), where she won several university and college law prizes including the prestigious Gibbs Prize, and a D.Jur from Osgoode Hall Law School, where she studied on a Commonwealth Scholarship. In 2019 she was awarded the title of Queens Counsel (honoris causa) (now Kings Counsel) by Her Majesty The Queen in recognition of her exceptional contribution to the law of England and Wales, and in 2007 received the CIPS Swinbank Medal for thought innovation in purchasing and supply.
She is currently a member of the Department of International Trade's Thematic Trade Advisory Group (Public Procurement) dealing with trade negotiations with trading partners outside the EU (2020- present).
Recently she has played a major role on the Cabinet Office Procurement Transformation Advisory Group (2019-2020), advising on the post-Brexit procurement reform programme which resulted in the Government's Green Paper of December 2020. In 2018-2019, as Expert to the International Partnership Against Corruption in Sport (IPACS) Task Force 1, she supervised the research work on procurement in international sporting events in collaboration with the OECD that was used as the basis for the 2019 IPACS report on tackling corruption in procurement for these events. She also recently served as a member of the Advisory Panel for the Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid (Ministry of Justice).
She was formerly a member of the UNCITRAL Procurement Experts Group and main consultant for the UNCITRAL reform project leading to the 2011 UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement and was a member of the World Bank International Advisory Group on Procurement for its 2017 overhaul of its policies on procurement in developing countries. She was also previously a member for more than 20 years of the European Commission's independent Advisory Committee on procurement. She has worked with, among others, the UK government, UN, WTO, European Commission, OECD, EU, European Central Bank, IADB, ILO and the Law Commission of England and Wales, as well as for law firms and commercial companies, including providing input into the WTO's regional and training academies for building capacity in public procurement.
Her numerous books and other publications have been extensively cited in courts in the UK, in other parts of Europe and the ECJ, and in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. Her major treatise The Law of Public and Utilities Procurement (3rd ed. 2014 (Vol.1) and 2018 (vol.2)) was described in 2018 by the domestic High Court as "the leading academic authority" and "highly persuasive" for the courts in making decisions, and has also been cited in at least ten other European countries.
Her other authored books include (with J. Linarelli and D. Wallace Jr) Regulating Public Procurement; National and International perspectives (2000) and Government Procurement in the WTO (Kluwer, 2003). Her most recent edited collections include (with Luke R Butler, Annamaria La Chimia and Christopher R Yukins, Public Procurement in (a) Crisis? Global Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic (Hart, 2021); (with Peter Kunzlik) Social and Environmental Policies in EC Procurement Law: New Directive and New Directions (2009; CUP); (with R. D. Anderson), The WTO Regime on Government Procurement: Challenge and Reform (CUP, 2011); (with S.Treumer) Competitive Dialogue in EU Procurement Law (2012, CUP); and (with Geo Quinot), Public Procurement Regulation in Africa (CUP, 2013).
In 1992 she launched the first international academic procurement journal, Public Procurement Law Review, and has edited the Review for more than 30 years.
She has taught university modules on procurement since 1995. She was Project Leader of the EU-funded project for developing a global academic network on procurement regulation, which included setting up several university centres for teaching and research in procurement in Europe and Asia (2008-2012) and also received awards from the British Academy, including a Newton Fellowship, to develop this work in Africa, leading to the creation and development of a further procurement centre in Africa.
She initiated the world-leading series of conferences Public Procurement: Global Revolution, launched in 1996 and with the next event to be held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in June 2022.
Expertise Summary
Her main expertise is in the legal regulation of public procurement.
In particular, she is an expert on the procurement regimes of the EU, UK, WTO and UNCITRAL (the Model Law on Public Procurement 2011), and on procurement in the field of sport.
Research Summary
As well as completing work on the reform of domestic public procurement regulations after Brexit., Sue Arrowsmith is currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press in collaboration… read more
Current Research
As well as completing work on the reform of domestic public procurement regulations after Brexit., Sue Arrowsmith is currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press in collaboration with Professor Peter Kunzlik on the foundations of EU public procurement law. The book explores the lack of coherence in the current fundamentals of the current regime and makes proposals for a more coherent approach.
In addition, she is completing work on a co-edited and co-authored book on balancing interests in competitive tendering that covers the whole spectrum of limited rights awarded by government (for example, public procurement contracts, sale contracts, and licences) from a common perspective, exploring how different interests are balanced in the reulatory process.
Past Research
Sue Arrowsmith is author of numerous books and articles in the leading refereed journals - such as the ICLQ, LQR, Public Law, Legal Studies, Cambridge Law Review, European Law Review and Common Market Law Review, mainly on public procurement but also covering the governmental liability and the law of restitution. She has been a pioneer in the field of public procurement law, publishing her first book (on Canadian procurement law) in 1988, establishing procurement law as a recognised teaching and research discipline in the UK, EU and beyond during the 1990s and 2000s, and developing the first theoretical frameworks for analysing the subject. She was the author of the first treatise on EU and UK procurement law, The Law of Public and Utilities Procurement (first published in 1996) - recently described by the UK courts as the leading academic text and as of persuasive authority for the courts - as well as of innovative articles developing frameworks for examining EU issues such as sustainability (LQR, 1995) and framework agreements (PPLR, 1999) long before these became mainstream topics. She is also co-author (with Linarelli and Wallace) of the first ever book to examine public procurement from an international and comparative perspective, Regulating Public Procurement: National and International Perspectives (2000). She has authored and edited books on many other aspects of the subject, including on the UNCITRAL Model Law and the WTO regime. Her work is mainly doctrinal in context but she has also undertaken or supervised important empirical work, in particular on how public bodies apply procurement law in practice and (with Craven) on the factors that influence, and obstruct, use of supplier remedies. The influence of her research on legal development was recognised by Her Majesty the Queen in 2019, when she was awarded the title of Queens Counsel (Honoris Causa), a title bestowed on those who make a significant contribution to the law from outside the courts.
Future Research
Her research after completing the projects currently underway will focus mainly on procurement in field of sport. This will build on her recent work on this topic for the International Partnership Against Procurement in Sport mapping integrity issues in international sporting events and on her other completed research that maps the field of procurement in sport more broadly.