Richard Reeve Baxter
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His Excellency Richard Reeve Baxter |
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|---|---|
 |
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| International Court of Justice | |
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In office 1979–1980 |
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| Nominated by | U.S. PCA National Group |
| Preceded by | Hardy Cross Dillard |
| Succeeded by | Stephen Schwebel |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 14, 1921 |
| Died | September 25, 1980 (aged 59) Cambridge, UK |
| Cause of death | Cancer |
| Nationality |
 United States
|
| Spouse(s) | Harriet Baxter |
| Alma mater |
Brown University, BA |
Brown University, BA
Richard Reeve Baxter (14 February 1921 – 25 September 1980) was a widely published American jurist and from 1950 until his death the preeminent figure on the law of war. Baxter served as a judge on the International Court of Justice (1979 -1980), as a professor of law at Harvard University (1954 - 1979) and as an enlisted man and officer in the U.S. Army (1942–46,1948–54). He is noted for consistently favoring moves that enhanced the protections afforded to those injured or threatened by armed conflict. Baxter authored the 1956 revision of the U.S. Army Manual on the Law of Land Warfare (FM27-10 ) and was a leading representative of the U.S. at the Geneva conferences that concluded the Protocols to the Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War. Baxter also, at the time of his death, was the preeminent scholar on the law of international waterways. He died of cancer one year in to his term as a judge of the International Court of Justice.
Richard Reeve Baxter was born in New York city and graduated from Brown University in 1942. After university, Baxter joined the U.S. Army and served as an enlisted man until the end of World War Two. He then entered the Harvard School of Law and rejoined the U.S. Army after graduating from the law school in 1948. In 1950 the army sent Baxter (then Captain) to work for a year with Professor Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, the Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge University and, at the time, the world's leading international legal scholar. Lauterpacht became a patron of Baxter's and was instrumental in Baxter leaving the Army in 1954 for a teaching position at Harvard Law School. At the time of his resignation from the U.S. Army, Baxter was awarded the Legion of Merit and held the position of Chief of the International Law Branch - Office of the Judge Advocate General. Baxter was later appointed as a full professor of law and first holder of the Manley O Hudson Chair of International Law. Baxter's research at Harvard concerned the legal regime of inter oceanic canals with an emphasis on the Panama and Suez. He became the leading scholar in the area of law concerning international waterways and his advice was actively sought by the Pentagon and State Department during the Suez crisis. Baxter's research was published as the monograph, The Law of International Waterways and is considered the definitive work on the subject and a classic in its field. In the latter part of his twenty years of teaching at Harvard Law School, he devoted a great deal of time and effort to the writing, together with Professor Louis B. Sohn, of a study on State responsibility for the U.N. International Law Commission.
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