Judge Theodor Meron: “Revival of customary international humanitarian law in international criminal tribunals”

Judge Theodor Meron

Image Judge Anita Ušacka on he left, with Professor Theodro Meron and the First VicePresident Judge Akua Kuenyehia, in the interim seat of the ICC on 2 November 2005.

Judge Theodor Meron (USA) is President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where he has served as a Judge of the Appeals Chamber since March 2001. In 2000-2001, he served as Counsellor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State.  

Since 1977, he has been a Professor of International Law at New York University Law School. In 1998, he served as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Rome Conference on the Establishment of the ICC and was later involved in the work of the Preparatory Commission of the ICC, with particular responsibilities for the definition of the crime of aggression.  

Between 1991 and 1995, Judge Meron was also Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and he has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard and at the University of California (Berkeley).  

He has been a Carnegie Lecturer at The Hague Academy of International Law, Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, Max Planck Institute Fellow (Heidelberg), Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.  

His legal education includes degrees from the Universities of Jerusalem, Harvard (doctorate degree) and Cambridge. Judge Meron has published extensively on international humanitarian law. His latest book “The Humanization of International Law’ will appear at the beginning of 2006.