Hersch Lauterpacht
| Hersch Lauterpacht | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
16 August 1897 Zhovkva, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria |
| Died | 8 May 1960 (aged 62) London, England |
| Occupation | Judge of the international court of justice |
Sir Hersch Lauterpacht QC (16 August 1897 – 8 May 1960) was was born in 1897 in the small town of Zolkiew, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, near the Austrian city of Lemberg, the capital of East Galicia, later the Polish city of Lwow, now Lviv in western Ukraine. In 1911 his family moved to Lemberg. In 1915 he enrolled in the law school of the university of Lemberg, later the Polish Jan Kazimierz university; it is not clear whether he graduated. Lauterpacht himself later wrote that he had not been able to take the final examinations “because the university has been closed to Jews in Eastern Galicia.” He then moved to Vienna, and then London, where he became an international lawyer.
By 1937 he had written several books on international law. Lauterpacht was a member of the United Nations' International Law Commission from 1952 to 1954 and a Judge of the International Court of Justice from 1955 to 1960. In the words of former ICJ President Stephen M. Schwebel, Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht's "attainments are unsurpassed by any international lawyer of this century [...] he taught and wrote with unmatched distinction". Sir Hersch's writings and (concurring and dissenting) opinions continue, nearly 50 years after his death, to be cited frequently in briefs, judgments, and advisory opinions of the World Court. He famously said "international law is at the vanishing point of law."
The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom is named after him. His son, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, CBE, QC, who founded the Centre, was its first director and remains actively involved in its work as Director Emeritus and an Honorary Professor of International Law.
Hersch Lauterpacht obtained a PhD degree from the London School of Economics in 1925, writing his dissertation on Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law, published in 1927.
Samuel Moyn has suggested that Lauterpacht was one of the few international lawyers actively campaigning for human rights in the late 1940s, and that he had "denounced the Universal Declaration as a shameful defeat of the ideals it grandly proclaimed."
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