Hersch Lauterpacht

Hersch Lauterpacht was born in Żółkiew near Lwów in Galicia (now Zhovkva, Ukraine). He studied law at the University of Lemberg (Lviv) and the University of Vienna, where he was mentored by the legendary legal theorist Hans Kelsen. Emigrating to Britain in 1923, he earned his doctorate at the London School of Economics and became one of the most brilliant legal scholars of his generation, being appointed Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge University in 1938.

Lauterpacht revolutionized international jurisprudence by challenging the centuries-old Westphalian doctrine that sovereign states held absolute authority over their subjects. In his revolutionary 1945 book, An International Bill of the Rights of Man, he argued that individual human beings are the ultimate subjects of international law, entitled to protections against tyranny that transcend state sovereignty.

In 1945, Lauterpacht served as chief legal consultant to US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson during the drafting of the Nuremberg Charter. Lauterpacht was the intellectual author of the concept of 'Crimes Against Humanity,' inserting it into the charter to ensure that Nazi leaders could be prosecuted for atrocities committed against their own citizens. He later drafted seminal opinions as a Judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague from 1955 until his death in 1960, being knighted for his services to international law.