Meron elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Theodor Meron, Charles L. Denison Professor of Law Emeritus and Judicial Fellow, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of 210 new Fellows and 19 Foreign Honorary Members.

Drawn from the sciences, the arts, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector, the 229 new members are leaders in their fields and include Nobel laureates and recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, and Academy, and Grammy awards. The new class, which includes Nelson Mandela, Bono, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, will be inducted at a ceremony on October 10, 2009 at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“These remarkable men and women have made singular contributions to their fields, and to the world,” said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. “By electing them as members, the Academy honors them and their work, and they, in turn, honor us.”

Meron is a leading scholar of international humanitarian, human rights, and international criminal law. He was the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until 2005 and also served as a judge in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He is currently a judge on the ICTY’s Appeals Chamber. His recent published works include International Law in the Age of Human Rights and The Humanization of International Law.

Meron has been on the NYU Law faculty since 1977. He has served as a counselor on international law in the U.S. Department of State and also has taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He has been a visiting professor of law at Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley.

A member of the Institute of International Law, Meron was awarded the 2004 Rule of Law Award by the International Bar Association and the 2006 Manley O. Hudson Medal of the American Society of International Law. He was made Officer of the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 2007 and was selected for the Charles Homer Haskins Prize of the American Council of Learned Societies for 2008.

Since its founding by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.