Henkin biography

American law scholar (1917–2010)

Louis Henkin (November 11, 1917 – October 14, 2010) was an American legal scholar. He was considered one of the most influential contemporary scholars of international law and the foreign policy of the United States.^[1] He was a former president of the American Society of International Law and of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and University Professor emeritus at Columbia Law School.

He was until his death the chairman of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.^[2][3]

Biography

He was born Eliezer Henkin on November 11, 1917, in Smolyany, in present-day Belarus, the son of Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, an authority in Jewish law.^[1] His mother died when he was two years old while she was helping deal with a dysentery outbreak and he and h