Louis Henkin
Louis Henkin | |
---|---|
Born | Eliezer Henkin November 11, 1917 Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Education | Yeshiva College Harvard University |
Academic work | |
Discipline | International law |
Institutions |
Louis Henkin (November 11, 1917 – October 14, 2010) was an American legal scholar. He was considered one of the most influential contemporary scholars of international law and the foreign policy of the United States.[1] He was a former president of the American Society of International Law and of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and University Professor emeritus at Columbia Law School. He was until his death the chairman of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[2][3]
Biography
He was born Eliezer Henkin on November 11, 1917, in
Henkin enlisted in the United States Army in June 1941 and saw action during World War II in the European Theater in Sicily, Italy, France and Germany. While with a 13-man artillery observation unit serving near Toulon, he was awarded the Silver Star for an incident in which he was able to use his ability to speak Yiddish as a means to negotiate the terms of the surrender of a German unit consisting of 78 men.[1] He became a corporal.
After completing his military service, he was a law clerk for
Beginning in 1948, Henkin worked at the United Nations bureau of the United States Department of State, where he was one of the individuals responsible for the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951, an agreement that established the internationally agreed upon definition of what constitutes a refugee and established the requirements for countries to provide asylum to individuals so designated. He left the State department in 1956 to teach for a year at Columbia University on the subject of nuclear disarmament which became the subject matter for his 1958 book Arms Control and Inspection in American Law. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania starting in 1958, continuing his work that was published as The Berlin Crisis and the United Nations in 1959 and the book Disarmament: The Lawyer's Interests, which was released in 1964.[1]
While teaching at Columbia Law School starting in the early 1960s and through the Justice and Society Program of the
Written while
Henkin died at age 92 on October 14, 2010, at his home in Manhattan after a long illness with Alzheimer's disease.[6] He was survived by his wife, Alice Hartman Henkin, as well as by three sons—his eldest, Joshua Henkin, is a novelist. His second son, David Henkin, is a professor of American history at the University of California, Berkeley. His youngest son, Daniel Henkin, is the Director of Music at the Ramaz School—and five grandchildren.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Grimes, William. "Louis Henkin, 92, Leader in Field of Human Rights Law", The New York Times, October 16, 2010. Accessed October 16, 2010.
- ^ "Louis Henkin". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-05-12.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-05-12.
- ^ a b c von Gutfield, Sonia. "Columbia Celebrates the Human Rights Legacy Of Professor Louis Henkin" Archived 2008-11-22 at the Wayback Machine, Columbia Law School. Accessed October 23, 2010.
- ^ via Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "Justices in agreement — no arguments on Yom Kippur", J. The Jewish News of Northern California, September 18, 2003. Accessed October 16, 2010.
- ^ An Interview | Joshua Henkin on Time, Memory, and Revision in Morningside Heights