Theodor Meron

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Theodor Meron (2011)

Theodor Meron (born April 28, 1930 in Kalisz , Poland ) is an Israeli - American expert on international law and judge . He is the former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and, since 2012, President of the International Residual Mechanism for Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunals (MICT) of the United Nations Security Council .

Life

Theodor Meron was born into a middle-class Jewish-Polish family in the small town of Kalisz in central Poland, whose Jewish community had roots that go back to the twelfth century. As one of the few of the approximately 20,000 Jewish residents, he survived the Holocaust , in contrast to his mother and numerous relatives. In 1945 he came to Palestine as a refugee. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Harvard University and Cambridge University .

In Israel he worked in the diplomatic service, including from 1961 to 1967 in the Mission to the United Nations in New York, then as legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 1971 to 1975 as Ambassador to Canada and then to the United Nations in Geneva .

In 1978 he emigrated from Israel to the United States and later acquired US citizenship. Since 1977 he has been professor of international law and from 1994 until his retirement in 2006 he was a professor at the law faculty of New York University . 2000–2001 he worked as an international law advisor to the US State Department.

He was President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from March 2003 to November 2005 and from November 2011 to November 2015. In December 2011, he was also elected judge of the International Residual Mechanism for the Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunals (MICT), which will serve as the successor to the ad hoc Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda from July 2012 . In addition, he was appointed the first President of the MICT in 2012. In March 2016, he was confirmed in the position for a further two years (until June 2018).

Publications

  • Investment Insurance in International Law. Oceana-Sijthoff, 1976.
  • The United Nations Secretariat. Lexington Books, 1977.
  • Human Rights in International Law. Oxford University Press, 1984.
  • Human Rights Law-Making in the United Nations. Oxford University Press, 1986.
  • Human Rights in Internal Strife: Their International Protection. Grotius Publications, 1987.
  • Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms as Customary Law. Oxford University Press, 1989.
  • Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws. Oxford University Press, 1993.
  • Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • War Crimes Law Comes of Age: Essays. Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • International Law In the Age of Human Rights. Martinus Nijhoff, 2004.
  • The Humanization of International Law. Martinus Nijhoff, 2006.
  • The Making of International Criminal Justice: The View from the Bench: Selected Speeches. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Awards

Meron received an ASIL Certificate of Merit in 1987 from the American Society for International Law for his work Human Rights Law Making in the United Nations , published a year earlier, and the Manley O. Hudson Medal in 2006 for outstanding services in the field of International law. In 2009 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Criticism and allegations

Meron was the most powerful of the 18 judges of the UN tribunal in The Hague through his presidency of the court. His Danish judge colleague Frederik Harhoff accused him in June 2013 that behind a series of surprising acquittals for alleged Balkan war criminals were powerful political interests and blamed court president Meron for this. He had pushed through a legal course correction in the judiciary, towards more caution in dealing with incomplete chains of evidence. Meron prevents convictions against alleged war criminals like the Croatian general Ante Gotovina ; Officials from the US and Israel have exerted pressure.

Web links

Commons : Theodor Meron  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • President. Information about Meron on the MICT website, accessed on March 21, 2018 (English)

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Michael Bazyler: Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World. Oxford University Press, New York 2016, p. 242.
  2. ^ Theodor Meron: The West Bank and International Humanitarian Law on the Eve of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Six-Day War. (PDF) In: The American Journal of International Law Vol. 111, Issue 2 of April 2017, pp. 357-375, here pp. 357f. (English)
  3. ↑ a b Theodor Meron - Biography. NYU School of Law website, accessed March 21, 2018
  4. ^ Theodor Meron: A Life of Learning. (PDF), Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture for 2008, p. Vi, website of the American Council of Learned Societies, accessed on March 21, 2018 (English)
  5. ^ Judge Theodor Meron appointed to new term as President of the Mechanism. Communication of the MICT of March 1, 2016, accessed on March 21, 2018 (English)
  6. ↑ sueddeutsche.de: Speaker from the war crimes tribunal
personal data
SURNAME Meron, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli-American lawyer, President of the UN Criminal Courts Mechanism
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Kalisz , Poland