Hersch Lauterpacht

Sir Hersch Lauterpacht QC (16 August 1897 – 8 May 1960) was a member of the United Nations' International Law Commission from 1952 to 1954 and a Judge of the International Court of Justice from 1955 to 1960. In the words of former ICJ President Stephen M. Schwebel, Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht's "attainments are unsurpassed by any international lawyer of this century [...] he taught and wrote with unmatched distinction". Sir Hersch's writings and (concurring and dissenting) opinions continue, nearly 50 years after his death, to be cited frequently in briefs, judgments, and advisory opinions of the World Court. He famously said "international law is at the vanishing point of law."
The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom is named after him. His son, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, CBE, QC, who founded the Centre, was its first director and remains actively involved in its work as Director Emeritus and an Honorary Professor of International Law.
Hersch Lauterpacht obtained a PhD degree from the London School of Economics in 1925, writing his dissertation on Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law, published in 1927.
Samuel Moyn has suggested that Lauterpacht was one of the few international lawyers actively campaigning for human rights in the late 1940s, and that he had "denounced the Universal Declaration as a shameful defeat of the ideals it grandly proclaimed."

Major works

• The Function of Law in the International Community, Oxford, 1933;
• Recognition in International Law, Cambridge, 1947;
• The Development of International Law by the International Court, London, 1958
• Oppenheim's International Law, Vol. 1, 8th ed., 1958
• Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, Hersch Lauterpacht – The Scholar as Judge, Part I. 37 British Yearbook of International Law 1-72, 1961; Part II, 38 British Yearbook of International Law 1-84, 1962; Part III, 39 British Yearbook of International Law 133-189, 1963
• Annual Digest and Reports of Public International Law Cases, Vols. 1–16, subsequently continued as International Law Reports, Vols. 17–24
• International Law – The Collected Papers of Hersch Lauterpacht, Vol.5, Edited by Elihu Lauterpacht (Cambridge 2004) as reviewed by H.E. Former ICJ President Stephen M. Schwebel, in 99 American Journal of International Law 726-729 (2005)
• The Life of Hersch Lauterpacht (Cambridge November 2010) by Elihu Lauterpacht and ILR Announcement as reviewed by H.E. Former ICJ President Schwebel