Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute
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| Established | 2000 |
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| Director | Leila Nadya Sadat |
| Location | St. Louis, Missouri |
| Website | http://law.wustl.edu/harris/pages.aspx?id=1709 |
The Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law serves as a center for instruction and research in international and comparative law. Through a combination of education and research, the Institute seeks to contribute to the betterment of the global society by expanding the knowledge and understanding of key issues, promoting the rule of law, and addressing the kinds of problems that require international cooperation and collaboration.
The Harris Institute was established in November 2000 as the "Institute for Global Legal Studies" and was later renamed as the "Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies" in honor and recognition of Whitney R. Harris' lifelong achievements in the field of international justice. Whitney R. Harris served as a trial counsel prosecuting the major German war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945 and he kept the Nuremberg dream alive through his writings and his advocacy, and later through his philanthropic generosity and support of legal education and research. In 2008, he and Anna Harris endowed the Institute’s "World Peace Through Law Award" at a ceremony during which the Harris Institute’s name was changed to the "Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute," the name it bears today.
With a focus on developing innovative global solutions to real-life problems, the Harris Institute has sponsored more than 80 speakers and held or co-sponsored more than 20 major international conferences since it opened. It also houses an "Ambassador-in-Residence" program and hosts debates and scholarship roundtables on pressing issues in international law and policy. By drawing on a vast pool of international and national expertise, the Harris Institute fosters collaboration, continuous dialogue and exchange among scholars and practitioners engaged in international or comparative work.
In 2008, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute launched Crimes Against Humanity Initiative to study the need for a comprehensive international convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity, analyze the necessary elements of such a convention, and draft a proposed treaty. The Nuremberg Charter delineated three categories of crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Yet, while the Genocide Convention provides a legal framework for prosecuting perpetrators of genocide, and the Geneva Conventions address war crimes, there is not yet a comprehensive convention on crimes against humanity. As a result, perpetrators continue to escape after committing systematic and widespread human rights violations. The statutes of the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda each contain different definitions of crimes against humanity, further demonstrating the need for a comprehensive convention, which would both punish perpetrators and prevent such atrocities from occurring in the future.
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