Biographical Sketch
Judge Thomas Buergenthal is the American judge on the International Court of Justice also known as the World Court. The Court is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. He was nominated to the Court by the United States and elected by the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council. Prior to his election to the Court, Judge Buergenthal was the Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School. Judge Buergenthal came to the United States at the age of 17. He spent the first 11 years of his life in various German camps and is one of the youngest survivors of the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. He graduated from Bethany College in West Virginia and New York University Law School, where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar. He received his LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees in International Law from Harvard University. Considered one of the world’s leading international human rights experts, Judge Buergenthal served as judge and later president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He was the first American member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee and a member of the three-member U.N. Truth Commission for El Salvador. He served as vice chairman of the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland and was a judge as well as president of the Administrative Tribunal of the Inter-American Development Bank. He also chaired the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Judge Buergenthal’s long academic career includes service as dean of Washington College of Law of the American University and endowed professorships at the University of Texas and Emory University, where he was also the director of the Human Rights Program of the Carter Center. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books and numerous articles in scholarly journals, and serves on the editorial boards of various legal journals as well as the Encyclopedia of Public International Law. Among Judge Buergenthal’s many prizes and awards is the prestigious Manley O. Hudson Medal of the American Society of International Law, the Society’s highest award. His honorary degrees include doctorates from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, the State University of New York, the American University, and the University of Minnesota. He is the honorary president of the American Society of International Law and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica.

Education
B.A., LL.D., Bethany College; J.D., New York University; LL.M., S.J.D., Harvard University; Dr.jur.(h.c.), University of Heidelberg and Free University of Brussels