6 June 2012 | Joint Seminar
Coffee Hour Talk: The Challenges Facing the International Criminal Court
Introduction
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is now ten years old. For much of the Court’s first decade, attention has been focused on the external challenges facing that Court, especially those posed by non-state parties (most prominently the United States) that have opposed the Court. While those challenges remain to some extent, the Court and its new Prosecutor now faces internal challenges, including by its own State Parties and other “friends” of international criminal justice. Visiting Professor Alvarez, who has been serving as a special adviser on public international law to the ICC’s first prosecutor for the past two years, reflected on these challenges to the Court and the independence of its Prosecutor.
About the Speaker
Professor José Enrique ALVAREZ the Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law at New York University Law School. He is also serving as special adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on a pro bono basis. Professor Alvarez was formerly the Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and the executive director of the Center on Global Legal Problems at Columbia Law School, a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, an associate professor at the George Washington University’s National Law Center, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center. At NYU, he teaches courses on international law, foreign investment, and international organizations. He served as President of the American Society of International Law from 2006-08. His recently concluded set of lectures at The Hague Academy of International Law, concerning the public international law governing international investment, are expected to be published in book form in late 2010. Prof. Alvarez’s book, International Organizations as Law-Makers, was published in paperback in 2006. Prior to entering academia in 1989, Professor Alvarez was an attorney adviser with the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State where he worked on cases before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, served on the negotiation teams for bilateral investment treaties and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and was legal adviser to the administration of justice program in Latin America coordinated by the Agency of International Development. Educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University, Professor Alvarez has also been in private practice and was a judicial clerk to the late Hon. Thomas Gibbs Gee of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
