Arnold McNair, 1st Baron McNair

Arnold Duncan McNair CBE, KC, FBA ( born March 4, 1885 in London, † May 22 1975 in Cambridge ) was a British lawyer and 1935-1937 Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge. From 1946 to 1955 he acted as a judge at the International Court of Justice, including from 1952 to 1955 as president of the court. From 1959 to 1965 he served as President of the European Court of Human Rights.

Life

Arnold Duncan McNair was born in 1885 in London and studied until 1909 law at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, where he subsequently also taught himself. After a temporary job as a solicitor in his hometown of London and as a lecturer in international law at the London School of Economics, he returned in 1912 as a Fellow and later as a senior tutor at the Gonville and Caius College. He received his Ph.D. in 1925 in Cambridge and was appointed there ten years later to the Whewell Chair of International Law. However, he gave up this position in 1937 again, to be Vice- Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. In 1945 he returned to Cambridge, where he became professor of comparative jurisprudence.

After the founding of the International Court of Justice ( ICJ) in The Hague in 1946, he was elected judge of the International Court of Justice, where he worked until 1955, including 1952-1955 as President of the Court. His successor at the ICJ was his pupil Hersch Lauterpacht as in Cambridge. From 1959 to 1965 he served as the first president of the newly created European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Arnold Duncan McNair was married in 1912 and had one son and three daughters. He died in 1975 in Cambridge.

Awards

Arnold Duncan McNair was recorded in 1918 as Commander ( CBE) in the Order of the British Empire in 1943 and knighted and appointed as King's Counsel. In 1939, the recording was followed by a fellowship in the British Academy, of which he was vice-president from 1955 to 1956. In addition, he was raised in 1955 as Baron McNair to the peerage and appointed by the American Society of International Law in 1954 as an honorary member in 1959 and awarded the Manley O. Hudson Medal, the highest honor the society.

Works (selection)

• The Law of the Air London 1932, 1953, 1964
• Roman Law and Common Law: A Comparison in outline. Cambridge 1952
• The Development of International Justice. New York 1954
• The Law of Treaties. Oxford 1961
• Lord McNair, Selected Papers and Bibliography. Leiden and New York 1974