- Person
- Hersch Lauterpacht
- Lived
- 1897–1960
- Field
- International law
- From
- British (born in Austrian Galicia)
The story
The United Nations International Law Commission was created to develop and codify international law, turning customs and scattered precedents into clear written rules that states could adopt. Hersch Lauterpacht, Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge and editor of the leading treatise on the subject, served as a member in the early 1950s, until his election to the International Court of Justice.
During his time on the commission he served as its general rapporteur and as special rapporteur on the law of treaties, the rules governing agreements between states. The subject suited his convictions. He believed that treaties between nations are like contracts between individuals, binding on those who sign them, and that the same moral and legal principles apply to the conduct of states as to individuals.
The commission's work on treaties took some twenty years. Lauterpacht was one of four special rapporteurs, with James Brierly, Gerald Fitzmaurice and Humphrey Waldock, who prepared successive drafts and commentaries. The result was the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, adopted on 22 May 1969 and in force since 1980, which has been ratified by well over a hundred states.
The commission was one of many roles in which Lauterpacht put his scholarship at the service of public institutions. Early in the Second World War, before the United States entered the fighting, he provided the US Attorney General with legal arguments to justify qualifying American neutrality in Britain's favour, which helped armaments reach Britain. He sat on the British War Crimes Executive in 1945 and 1946, was a member of the British delegation in the Corfu Channel case of 1948 and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company case of 1951 at the International Court of Justice, and at the British government's request revised part of the War Office manual on the law of war on land. Many governments consulted him.
From 1955 until his death in 1960 he served as a judge of the International Court of Justice. There, in a case about the guardianship of a child, he held that an agreement between two states cannot be altered by a domestic law passed by one of them, a principle at the heart of the law of treaties.
Why it matters
Lauterpacht's work on the commission helped lay foundations for the Vienna Convention, the codified rules that today govern agreements between nations.
About Hersch Lauterpacht
Galician-born Cambridge jurist who put the individual at the heart of international law, helped bring “crimes against humanity” to Nuremberg, and sat on the World Court.
More about Hersch Lauterpacht
- Hersch Lauterpacht put crimes against humanity into lawHersch Lauterpacht recommended the charges 'war crimes' and 'crimes against humanity' used at Nuremberg, putting the protection of individuals at the heart of international law.
- Hersch Lauterpacht launched the International Law ReportsIn 1929 Hersch Lauterpacht and Arnold McNair started the Annual Digest of International Law Cases, now the International Law Reports, an essential resource running to dozens of volumes.
- Hersch Lauterpacht edited the classic international law textFor 25 years Hersch Lauterpacht edited Oppenheim's International Law so thoroughly that it became known in legal circles as Lauterpacht's Oppenheim.
- Hersch Lauterpacht's ideas shaped two human rights chartersEnglish Heritage notes that Hersch Lauterpacht's 1945 book An International Bill of the Rights of Man helped form the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention.
Sources
- Hersch Lauterpacht Wikipedia
- Sir Hersch Lauterpacht: teacher, writer and judge, a presidential address by Dorothy Stone Jewish Historical Society of England
- Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties Wikipedia
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