Thomas Buergenthal

Thomas Buergenthal (born 11 May 1934 in Lubochna, Czechoslovakia, today Slovakia) is an American judge on the International Court of Justice.

Biography

Thomas Buergenthal, born to German-Jewish parents who had moved from Germany to Czechoslovakia in 1933, grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Kielce (Poland) and later in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. After the War he lived with his mother in Göttingen.On 4 December 1951, he emigrated from Germany to the United States. He studied at Bethany College in West Virginia (graduated 1957), and received his J.D. at New York University Law School in 1960, and his LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees in international law from Harvard Law School.

Buergenthal is a specialist in international law and human rights law.Since 2000, he has sat as a judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Prior to this appointment, he was Lobingier Professor of International and Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at The George Washington University Law School and has held numerous prestigious academic positions. He has served as a judge for many years, including lengthy periods on various specialised international organization bodies. Between 1979 and 1991, he served as a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including a stint as that court's president; from 1989 to 1994, he was a judge on the Inter-American Development Bank's Administrative Tribunal; in 1992 and 1993, he served on the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador; and from 1995 to 1999, he was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Buergenthal is the author of more than a dozen books and a large number of articles on international law, human rights and comparative law subjects.

The Norwegian humanitarian Odd Nansen, who befriended Buergenthal in Sachsenhausen, wrote a book about him titled "Tommy."

Judge Buergenthal is a co-recipient of the 2008 Gruber Foundation Prize for International Justice for his contribution for the promotion and protection of human rights in different parts of the world, and particularly in Latin America. For more information, visit http://www.gruberprizes.org.

Selected works

* "Law-Making in the International Civil Aviation Organization" (1969)
* "International Protection of Human Rights" (with L. B. Sohn, 1973)
* "Public International Law in a Nutshell" (4th edition 2007, with S.D. Murphy)
* "International Human Rights in a Nutshell" (3rd edition 2002, with D. Shelton and D. Stewart)
* "Protecting Human Rights in the Americas" (4th edition 1995, with D. Shelton)
* "Ein Glückskind: Wie ein kleiner Junge zwei Ghettos, Auschwitz und den Todesmarsch überlebte und ein zweites Leben fand" (2007, in German), engl. "A lucky child: How a little boy survived two ghettos, Auschwitz and the death march and found a new life". Autobiography, available in various languages: Spanish, Dutch, Czech; will be available in English in 2009.

External links

* [http://www.ailf.org/notable/tbuergenthal.html AILF Biography of Thomas Buergenthal]
* [http://www.icj-cij.org/court/index.php?p1=1&p2=2&p3=1&judge=11 ICJ Biography of Thomas Buergenthal]

Persondata
NAME= Buergenthal, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=American judge on the International Court of Justice
DATE OF BIRTH=11 May 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH=Lubochna, Czechoslovakia
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=