Theodor MeronJUDGE THEODOR MERON CMG. Judge Meron, born in Poland in 1930, has been a Judge and, between March 2012 and January 2019, was the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism). He was also the President of the Apeals Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He served four terms as President of the ICTY and three terms as President of the Mechanism, a unique record in the international judiciary. A leading scholar of international humanitarian law, human rights, and international criminal law, Judge Meron is the author of twelve books, mostly on international law and two on chivalry in Shakespeare, one of which received the best book award from the American Society of International Law, and more than a hundred articles, including some of the books and articles that helped build the legal foundations for international criminal tribunals. His most recent book is Standing up for Justice (OUP 2021). He has taught at NYU Law School, Harvard, Geneva, and Oxford. His interviews and profiles appeared in Atlantic monthly, Lines Magazine, Foreign Policy, The Prospect Magazine, Der Spiegel and Le Monde, among others. He is a member of the Institute of International Law and of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and medals, such as the Hudson Medal (ASIL) (the highest distinction of ASIL) and the Haskins Prize (ACLS), Officer of the French Legion of Honour, Grand Officer of the French National Order of Merit, Officer of the Order of Merit of Poland and Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George of the United Kingdom and Honorary Citizen of Kalisz. A past honorary President of the American Society of International Law, past Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, and past Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, he is Charles L. Denison Professor of Law Emeritus at NYU Law School and, since 2014, a Visiting Professor of Law at Oxford University. He is a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, an Academic Associate of Oxford Bonavero Human Rights Institute, and an Honorary Fellow at Trinity College. He is a renowned judge, scholar, and author. He received doctorates in Honoris Causa from the University of Warsaw and Calisia. He was special adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2022-2025). As child and teenager, he survived the Holocaust in ghettos and a labor camp. He was later smuggled out of Communist Poland and studied law at the Universities of Jerusalem, Harvard, and Cambridge. He has had distinguished and varied careers as a diplomat at the rank of Ambassador, Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry of Israel, Counsellor on International Law to the US State Department, an Ambassador to Canada, and President of UN War Crimes Tribunals, as a leading professor of law, and now as a visiting professor of law in Oxford and Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. He has written landmark decisions on genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. As a legal adviser in Israel, he authored a famous opinion in 1967 declaring the illegality of settlements in the West Bank. He is considered one of the world's authorities on international justice. His memoir (A Thousand Miracles: from surviving the Holocaust to Judging Genocide)will be published by Hurst Publications in London. One of his poems was published by Oxford Review of Books in May 2025. Read More Read Less