Ni Zhengyu

Ni Zhengyu, before 1949

Ni Zhengyu ( Chinese  倪 征 ? ; born July 28, 1906 in Wujiang , Jiangsu Province ; † September 3, 2003 ) was a Chinese lawyer . After the Second World War he worked as an advisor to the Chinese prosecution in the Tokyo trials and was the first judge from the People's Republic of China at the International Court of Justice from 1985 to 1994 .

Life

Ni Zhengyu was born in Wujiang in 1906 and graduated from school in 1923. He then studied at Hujiang University in Shanghai for two years . Under the impact of existing in China consular jurisdiction were granted by the foreigners in the legal field special privileges, he began studying law at the Suzhou University to make a contribution to overcoming the consular jurisdiction. In 1928/1929 he devoted himself to further studies at Stanford University in the United States and received his doctorate there in 1929.

After returning to his home country, he initially worked in private practice and also taught at various universities. After working for the Chinese Ministry of Justice, he became a judge at the Special District Court in Shanghai in 1933 and President of the Chungqing Court in 1941 . Three years later he moved again to the Ministry of Justice. After the end of World War II , he was an advisor to the Chinese Prosecution at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East , which was responsible for prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Pacific War . From 1948 to 1956 he was a professor and dean of the law faculty at Suzhou University.

In 1956, Ni Zhengyu joined the Chinese Foreign Ministry, where he served as legal advisor with the rank of ambassador . In this function he was later involved in the negotiations on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea from 1973 to 1982 . From 1982 to 1984 he was a member of the UN International Law Commission. In November 1984 he was elected judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague together with the Norwegian Jens Evensen . He was the first judge from the People's Republic of China in the history of the ICJ and served at the court for a regular nine-year term from February 1985 to February 1994. In 1993, his compatriot Shi Jiuyong was elected to succeed him.

Ni Zhengyu belonged to the Institut de Droit international from 1987 . He died in 2003.

literature

• Ling Yan: In memoriam: Ni Zhengyu. In: Chinese Journal of International Law. 3 (2) / 2004. Oxford University Press, pp. 693-695, ISSN  1540-1650
• Solemn Declaration by two new Members of the Court. Biographies of New Members. Ni Zhengyu. Press release 85/2 of the International Court of Justice of January 28, 1985 on the occasion of the swearing in of Ni Zhengyu (available online on the ICJ website as a PDF file , approx. 245 kB)

Web links

Commons : Ni Zhengyu  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Ni is the family name here, Zhengyu is the first name.