Professor; Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center; Director of the Cox Center War Crimes Research Office
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Michael Scharf is Professor of Law and Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In 2004-05, Professor Scharf served as a member of the elite international team of experts that provided training to the judges and prosecutors of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, and in 2006 he led the first training session for the Prosecutors and Judges of the newly established U.N. Cambodia Genocide Tribunal. In February 2005, Professor Scharf and the Public International Law and Policy Group, a Non-Governmental Organization he co-founded, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by six governments and the Prosecutor of an International Criminal Tribunal for the work they have done to help in the prosecution of major war criminals, such as Slobodan Milosevic, Charles Taylor, and Saddam Hussein.
During the first Bush and Clinton Administrations, Scharf served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs, and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In 1993, he was awarded the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award “in recognition of superb performance and exemplary leadership” in relation to his role in the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
A graduate of Duke University School of Law (Order of the Coif and High Honors), and judicial clerk to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat on the Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, Scharf is the author of over sixty scholarly articles and ten books, including Balkan Justice, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was awarded the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit for the Outstanding book in International Law in 1999, and Peace with Justice, which won the International Association of Penal Law Book of the Year Award for 2003. His most recent book, Saddam on Trial: Understanding and Debating the Iraqi High Tribunal, is available from Amazon.
Scharf has testified as an expert before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Armed Services Committee; his Op Eds have been published by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and International Herald Tribune; and he has appeared on ABC World News Tonight, the NBC Today Show, Nightline, The O=Reilly Factor, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, the BBC, CNN, and NPR. Professor Scharf also hosts an award-winning Blog on the Saddam Hussein Trial.
Winner of the Case School of Law Alumni Association’s 2005 “Distinguished Teacher Award” and Ohio Magazine’s 2007 “Excellence in Education Award,” Scharf teaches International Law, International Criminal Law, the Law of International Organizations, and a War Crimes Research Lab. In 2002, Professor Scharf established the War Crimes Research Office at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, which provides research assistance to the Prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Court, and the Iraqi Special Tribunal on issues pending before those international tribunals. Copies of over 135 of these research memos are available on the Cox International Law Center War Crimes Research Portal.
Phone: 216/368-3299 Email: mps17@case.edu
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