Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 4, 2002|Volume 31, Number 5

Wedgwood named to U.N. Human Rights Committee

Ruth Wedgwood
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Law professor Ruth Wedgwood has been chosen as the American member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a group of independent experts elected by the 148 state members of the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights, considered the most important of the international human rights treaties.

The Human Rights Committee, which meets in Geneva and New York, questions states on their periodic reports on such topics as free speech, due process of law and free elections. The committee also adjudicates individual complaints of human rights violations against countries that have joined an optional protocol.

The United States joined the Covenant in 1992. Judges Roslyn Higgins and Thomas Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice are among the prior members of the committee, which meets three times each year.

Wedgwood has taught international law at the Law School since 1986. She is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law, and a member of the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law. She is currently director of studies at the Research Center of the Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands, and serves on the international policy advisory board of the United Nations Association. She is also a senior fellow for international organizations and law at the Council on Foreign Relations.

She was a law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and executive editor of the Yale Law Journal.

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Campus Notes