l2:00-1:40 pm Sunday, January l6, 2005 - Congregation Beth Israel
Lunch: Keynote Speaker: Judge Theodor Meron
"Judging Atrocities at the Hague and in Shakespeare: Leaders and Executioners"

President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Crimes Against the Former Yugoslavia

Since his election to the Tribunal by the U.N. General Assembly in March 2001, Judge Meron, a citizen of the United States, has serviced on the Appeals Chamber, which hears appeals from both the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). A leading scholar of international humanitarian law, human rights, and international criminal law, Judge Meron wrote some of the books and articles that helped build the legal foundations for international criminal tribunals. A Shakespeare enthusiast, he has also written articles and books on the law of war and chivalry in Shakespeare's historical plays.

Since 1977, Judge Meron has been a Professor or International Law and, since 1994, he holder of the Charles L. Denison Chair at New York University Law School. In 2000-2001, he served as Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State. Between 1991 and 1995 he was Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and he has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard and at the University of Jerusalem, Harvard (where he received his doctorate), and Cambridge.

He was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law (1993-98) and is now an honorary editor. He is a member of the Board of Editors of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Society of International Law, the French Society of International Law, the American Branch of the International Law Association, and the Bar of the State of New York. He has served on the advisory committees or boards of several human rights organizations, including Americas Watch and the International League for Human Rights. In 1990, he served as a Public Member of the United States Delegation to the CSCE Conference on Human Dimensions in Copenhagen. In 1998, he served as a member of the United States Delegation to the Rome Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC) and was involved in the drafting of the provisions on crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has also served on the preparatory commission for the establishment of the ICC, with particular responsibilities for the definition of the crime of aggression. He has served on several committees of experts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), including those on Internal Strife, on the Environmental and Armed Conflicts, and on Direct Participation in Hostilities Under International Humanitarian Law. He was also a member of the steering committee of ICRC experts on Customary Rules of International Humanitarian Law.

He has been a Carnegie Lecturer at The Hague Academy of International Law, Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, max Planck Institute Fellow (Heidelberg), Sire Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He has lectured at many universities and at the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg). He helped establish the ICRC/Graduate Institute of International Studies seminars for University Professors or International Humanitarian Law. He leads the annual ICRC seminars for UN diplomats on international humanitarian law at NYU, and in the past led such seminars in Geneva. He is a member of the Institute of International Law.

His books are: Investment Insurance in International Law (Oceana-Sijthoff 1976); The United National Secretariat (Lexington Books 1977); Human Rights in International Law (Oxford University Press 1984); Human Rights Law-Making in the United Nations (Oxford University press 1986) (awarded the certificate of merit of the American Society of International Law); Human Rights in Internal Strife: Their International Protection (Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures (Grotius Publications 1987); Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms as Customary law (Oxford University press 1993); Blood Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare (Oxford University Press 1998); War Crimes Law Comes of Agel Essays (Oxford University Press 1998), and International Law In the Age of Human Rights (Martinus Nijhoff 2004).

A frequent contributor to the American Journal of International Law and other legal journals, he delivered the General Course of Public International Law at The Hague Academy of International Law.