Max Sørensen

Max Sørensen (1968)

Max Sørensen (born February 19, 1913 in Copenhagen ; † October 11, 1981 ) was a Danish diplomat and international lawyer .

Life

The son of a wholesaler studied law at the University of Copenhagen and the Geneva University Institute for International Studies and in 1938 found a job with the Danish Foreign Ministry. In 1940 he married Ellen Jacobsen, the daughter of a major general. As part of his work in the foreign service, he worked as an embassy attaché in Bern in 1943 and as legation secretary in London in 1944 . In 1945 he was promoted to deputy head of department in the Foreign Ministry.

Sørensen left this post two years later to teach public international and constitutional law at Aarhus University as a full professor . The previous year he had obtained his doctorate in law. He remained in international politics in a variety of functions. In 1949 he was a member of the Danish delegation to the London Conference, at which the founding of the Council of Europe with the London Ten Power Pact was decided. Between 1949 and 1951 he represented Denmark in the UN Human Rights Commission , from 1954 he headed its sub-commission for the prevention of discrimination and for the protection of minorities for two years and also sat on a committee that dealt with the application of the ILO conventions until 1964 .

In 1955 he was appointed to the European Commission for Human Rights , which he presided over from 1967 and was a member until 1972. From 1956 until 1972 he served as legal advisor in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He chaired the Danish delegation at the first two UN conferences on the law of the sea in 1958 and 1960. He was appointed ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice by the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands for disputes relating to the continental shelf under the North Sea (1968–1969). He retired from the University of Aarhus in 1972.

In 1973 he took over the office of judge at the European Court of Justice , which he held until 1979. The following year he was appointed judge at the European Court of Human Rights . Sørensen was the first of four lawyers to speak law at both institutions. He died in 1981 at the age of 68.

He was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration , the Institute for International Law and the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and the Hague Academy for International Law . At the latter he gave two guest lectures on the subjects of “Le Conseil de L'Europe” (1952) and “Principes de droit international public” (1960).

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At the age of 19, Sørensen published his first legal essay entitled “La prescription en droit international”. His most important works are “Les sources du droit International” (1946) and his lecture “Principes de droit international public” at the Hague Academy for International Law (1960). He was the editor of the international law textbook "Manual of Public International Law", which contained contributions by lawyers from twelve countries, and was a member of the editorial committee of the "Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights".

Awards

• Honorary doctorate from the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel (1964)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Strasbourg

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• Erika Engel ( inter alia): European BASIC RIGHTS magazine . Born in 1980, p. 308. NP Engel Verlag, Kehl am Rhein.
• International Biographical Archive 42/1981 of October 5, 1981
• Short biography on the website of the ECJ
• Manfred Lachs : The teacher in international law . 2nd Edition. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1987. pp. 143-145.
• Ignaz Seidl-Hohenveldern : Max Sørensen (February 19, 1913 - October 11, 1981) . In: Austrian Journal for Public Law and International Law . Edition 32, 129th year 1982. P. 129.
• Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights . Volume 23, 1980, pp. 50-53. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ( online)

Web links

Commons : Max Sørensen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files