Erika de Wet completed her B Iur and LLB as well as her LLD at the University of the Free State (South Africa). She holds an LLM from Harvard University and completed her Habilitationsschrift at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) in December 2002. It was published with Hart Publishing in 2004 under the title The Chapter VII Powers of the United Nations Security Council. This work has since been widely cited, including by the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the House of Lords (United Kingdom Supreme Court). Her most recent book with (with Jure Vidmar) is Hierarchy in International Law: The Place of Human Rights, which was published in 2012 by Oxford University Press.

Professor de Wet joined the University of Pretoria in January 2011 as Professor of International Law. Between 2004 and 2010 she was tenured Professor of International Constitutional Law at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam, a position which she still holds part-time. She lectures in international law at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the University of Bonn (Germany) on a regular basis. Between 2007 and 2010 she served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Issues of Public International Law of the Netherlands.

 In 2010 she was first runner-up in the Department of Science and Technology’s 2010 Women in Science Excellence Awards (in the category for the Social Sciences and Humanities). She has been the recipient of various international scholarships, including an Excellence Grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2007-2011); Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2007-2008); Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship (1998-2000); Harvard Law School Fellowship (1998-1999); and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship (1992-1993).

Together with Professor André Nollkaemper, Erika de Wet is Editor in Chief of the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC) Online; she is also one of the General Editors of the Oxford Constitutions Online, with Professors Rüdiger Wolfrum and Rainer Grote of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany.

Key publications include:

• (with Jure Vidmar). Hierarchy in International Law: the Place of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 333.
• ‘South Africa’ in Dinah Shelton (ed), International Law and Domestic Legal Systems: Incorporation, Transformation and Persuasion, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011, 567-593.
• ‘Human rights considerations and the enforcement of targeted sanctions in Europe: the emergence of core standards of judicial protection’, in Bardo Fassbender (ed), in Securing Human Rights? Achievements and Challenges of the UN Security Council, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 141-171.
•  ‘The Governance of Kosovo: Security Council Resolution 1244 and the Establishment and Functioning of Eulex’, American Journal of International Law (103) 2009, pp. 83-96.
• 'The Reception Process in the Netherlands and Belgium', in Helen Keller & Alec Stone Sweet (eds), A Europe of Rights: the Impact of the ECHR on National Legal Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008, pp. 229-310.
• 'Zur Zukunft der Völkerrechtswissenschaft in Deutschland', Zeitschrift für Ausländisches Öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (67) 2007, pp.  777-798.
• 'The Emergence of International and regional Value Systems as a Manifestation of the Emerging International Constitutional Order', Leiden Journal of International Law (19) 2006, pp. 611-632.
• 'The International Constitutional Order', International & Comparative Law Quarterly (55) 2006, pp. 51-76.
• 'The "Friendly but Cautious" Reception of International Law in the Jurisprudence of the South African Constitutional Court: Some Critical Remarks', Fordham International Law Review (28) 2005, pp. 1529-1565.
• The Chapter VII Powers of the United Nations Security Council (Hart Publishing, 2004), 413 pp.
• 'The Direct Administration of Territories by the United Nations and its Member States in the Post Cold-War Era: Legal Bases and Implications for National Law’, Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (8) 2004, pp. 291-340.
• 'The Prohibition of Torture as an International Norm of Jus Cogens and its Implications for National and Customary Law’, European Journal of International Law (15) 2004, pp. 97-121.
• (with André Nollkaemper), ‘Review of the Security Decisions by National Courts’, German Yearbook of International Law (45) 2002, pp. 166-202.
• The Relationship between the Security Council and Regional Organizations during Enforcement Action under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter’, Nordic Journal of International Law (71) 2002, pp. 1-37.
• The Constitutional Enforceability of Economic and Social Rights: the Meaning of the German Constitutional Model for South Africa (Butterworths, 1996), 170 pp.
• ‘Labour Standards in the Globalized Economy: the Inclusionof a Social Clausein the GATT/WTO’, Human Rights Quarterly (17) 1995, pp. 443-462.