NYU Law Professor Theodor Meron Elected President of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

joan.dim@nyu.edu

(New York City - March 3, 2003) -- Theodor Meron, Charles L. Denison Professor of Law at New York University Law School, has been elected President of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), effective March 11, 2003.

As part of his responsibilities, Professor Meron will also preside over the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY as well as the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR).

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, located in The Hague, The Netherlands, was established by the Security Council in 1993 in the face of serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory since 1991, and as a response to the threat to international peace and security posed by these violations.

"We congratulate Ted Meron on this momentous achievement," said NYU Law School Dean Richard Revesz. "Ted's scholarship, passion for justice and knowledge of international human rights and humanitarian law have profoundly enriched the life of our institution during the last 26 years. Ted also exemplifies NYU Law's tradition of unprecedented leadership on international courts and tribunals."

Born in Poland, Professor Meron moved to Palestine and received his first legal training at the University of Jerusalem. Later, he attended Harvard Law School, earning his LL.M. and J.S.D., and Cambridge University, where he held the prestigious Humanitarian Trust Fellowship in International Law, later held by another member of the NYU faculty, Professor Hisashi Owada.

After Cambridge, Professor Meron joined the Israeli foreign ministry. He was Counsellor to the Mission to the United Nations in New York, Legal Advisor to the Ministry, Ambassador to Canada, and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. He resigned from the Israeli Foreign Service in 1977 and immediately joined NYU Law. Since then he has become a naturalized U.S. citizen and served as a Public Member of the U.S. Delegation to the CSCE Conference on Human Dimension in Copenhagen. Since 1991 he has also held a Professorship of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Professor Meron is the author of numerous articles and several books, the most recent being Henrys Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, and editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law. As an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Meron has been the academic resource in two recent Council studies, one leading to the recommendation to support the war crimes trials in the former Yugoslavia, the other to recommend that the United States ratify Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.

03/03/03