Theodor Meron

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Theodor Meron (b. 28 April 1930) was the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until 2005, and was a judge in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He now serves as a judge on the Appeal Chamber of the ICTY.

Born in Kalisz, Poland, Theodor Meron received his legal education at the Hebrew University (M.J.), Harvard Law School (LL.M., J.S.D.) and Cambridge University (Diploma in Public International Law). Since 1977, he has been a Professor of International Law and, since 1994, the holder of the Charles L. Denison Chair at New York University School of Law. In 2000-2001, he served as Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State.

In the late 1960s, he was legal counsel to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and wrote a secret 1967 memo for Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who was considering creating an Israeli settlement at Kfar Etzion. This was just after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Meron argued that creating new settlements in the Occupied Territories would be a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Eshkol went ahead to create the settlement anyway and so began the Greater Israel movement and Israel's settlement enterprise.