Louis Henkin

Louis Henkin ( born November 11, 1917 in Smoljani, Russian Empire, † October 14, 2010 in New York), born Eliezer Henkin, was an American jurist who was in his lifetime as one of the most renowned experts in the field of human rights. He served from 1957 to 1962 as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and then to 1988 at Columbia University. In recognition of his work he was awarded among others with the Manley O. Hudson Medal and received internationally in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institut de Droit.

Life

Louis Henkin was born in 1917, in the resort east of Minsk in present-day Belarus village Smoljani as the youngest of six children of a rabbi and emigrated in 1923 with his family to the United States. He grew up in New York, where he from 1933, studying mathematics at Yeshiva University graduated, which he completed in 1937 with an AB degree. He then studied law at Harvard University, where in 1940 he graduated as LL.B. obtained. After his return to New York he worked for the second district as Law Clerk by Judge Learned Hand in the United States Court of Appeals. He made then 1941-1945 military service in the United States Army and was during this time awarded the Silver Star. Subsequently, he worked in the years 1946/1947 as a Law Clerk for Felix Frankfurter, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as 1947/1948 in the legal department of the United Nations.

From 1948 to 1956 he worked in the office for international organizations in the U.S. State Department. During this time he was a member of the U.S. delegations to various international conferences, including, inter alia 1950-1953 to the meetings of the UN General Assembly. In 1956, he joined initially as a lecturer at Columbia University before he served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1957 to 1962. In 1963 he returned to Columbia University, where he was named Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and in the course of his career in 1978 for Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor Emeritus in 1988. In the years 1965 and 1989 he also taught at the Hague Academy of International Law. In addition, he belonged from 1953 to 1969 to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and from 1999 to 2002 the UN Human Rights Committee on.

Louis Henkin was married in 1960 and father of three sons. He died in 2010 in New York.

Work

Focus of the ministry of Louis Henkin was the area of human rights, in which he advocated a comprehensive U.S. participation in the relevant international institutions. He sat down in addition for the respect of the formulated in the UN Charter, the general prohibition of force and all of a customary international law and international treaties obligations by the United States, and accordingly criticized unilateral military actions of the U.S. in other countries.

His other topics in teaching and research included, among other things, arms control, the influence of international law on international politics, the law of the sea in the use of marine resources and the role of American constitutional law in the field of international relations. Together with Oscar Schachter, he served from 1978 to 1984 as editor - in -chief of the journal American Journal of International Law. From 1985 to 1987 he was also president of the American Society of Political and Legal Philosophy, and 1994-1996 of the American Society of International Law.

Awards

Louis Henkin received in recognition of his work including the 1995, the Manley O. Hudson Medal, the highest award of the American Society of International Law, and in 2001 the Goler T. Butcher Medal - 2010 and posthumously the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights. He was also recorded in 1974 in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1985 in the Institut de Droit international and 1986 in the American Philosophical Society.

At Columbia University, in 1981 with the appointment as University Professor awarded him their highest academic award and in 1986 with the Wolfgang Friedmann Memorial Award distinguished, is the named Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights since 1999, a chair at him. At the Faculty of Law, University of Miami bears since 2010 with the Louis Henkin Lecture Series on Human Rights a lecture series its name. The Columbia University ( 1995) and Brooklyn Law School (1997) awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Works (selection)

• Arms Control and Inspection in American Law. 1958 New York
• Law for the Sea 's Mineral Resources. New York 1968
• How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy. New York, 1970, 1979
• Foreign Affairs and the Constitution. New York 1972, 1996
• Rights of Man Today. Boulder 1978
• The International Bill of Rights: The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. New York 1981
• Human Rights. New York 1999, 2009