Hersch Lauterpacht

Lauterpacht served as legal adviser to the British prosecution team at Nuremberg. He was instrumental in inserting 'crimes against humanity' into the London Charter—the legal foundation of the tribunal . Parts of the closing speeches delivered by British prosecutor Hartley Shawcross came from Lauterpacht's pen . His legal arguments focused on a radical principle: state sovereignty cannot shield individuals from criminal responsibility. He also argued that the defense of 'superior orders' was no longer valid law, a view eventually adopted in the British Military Manual .

Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin studied at the same university in Lviv but developed opposing legal visions . Lauterpacht's 'crimes against humanity' focused on protecting individuals—each person possesses inherent rights that international law must vindicate . Lemkin's 'genocide' focused on protecting groups as collectives—the destruction of a people as a people. At Nuremberg, Lauterpacht's concept was adopted as one of the four counts of indictment. His deliberate avoidance of group-based language reflected his fear that reifying groups would ultimately undermine individual protection . The tension between these two approaches persists in international law today.

Published in 1945, Lauterpacht's book proposed a legally binding international bill that would constrain what states could do to individuals within their jurisdiction . It included his own draft Bill of Human Rights covering personal freedom, religious liberty, equality before law, economic and social rights, and enforcement mechanisms through a High Commission . The book was immediately recognized as revolutionary—the first serious legal study to place the individual at the center of the international legal landscape . It provided direct inspiration for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950 .

Lauterpacht was born in 1897 in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and studied law in Vienna before emigrating to London in 1923 . His parents, siblings, and their children died in the Holocaust . This personal tragedy—the failure of international law to protect his own family—shaped his lifelong insistence that international law must reach individuals, not just states. As an émigré who arrived in England speaking little English and with few resources, he rose within fourteen years to the Whewell Professorship at Cambridge, driven by a conviction that law must serve human dignity rather than state power .

Published in 1933, this book argued that compulsory adjudication is essential to the rule of law in the international community. Lauterpacht conducted a rigorous examination of third-party dispute settlement and made a comprehensive case against the doctrine of 'non-liquet'—the idea that judges could refuse to decide cases because the law was unclear. He insisted that international judges must exercise creativity and diligence to fill gaps in the law rather than declaring disputes non-justiciable . His vision was that international law should function as law properly so-called, not merely as a collection of voluntary commitments among sovereigns.

Lauterpacht defies easy categorization. He engaged deeply with natural law tradition—his International Bill drew on the idea of inherent rights of man —but his method was also rigorously legal and doctrinal. He rejected the unbridled assertion of sovereignty that characterized much positivist international law . His approach was described as 'innate cosmopolitan,' deriving world norms from the proper study of the nature of international society rather than from abstract principles or state consent . He argued for the 'domestic analogy'—that there is no good reason to differentiate between legal principles applicable in domestic and international realms .

Lauterpacht was elected a judge of the International Court of Justice in 1954 and served until his death in 1960 . He was knighted in 1956 . His opinions at the ICJ—particularly separate and dissenting opinions—reflected his distinctive vision of international law as a system of enforceable rules protecting individuals. He died in office at the age of 62, cutting short what many expected would be an even more influential judicial career . His legacy at the Court is preserved through the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures, established at Cambridge in his honor .