Stephen M. Schwebel has been a practitioner, professor, government legal adviser, judge and arbitrator. He gained early experience in international arbitration while practising law in New York with White and Case (1954–59), taught international law, commercial law and contracts as an assistant professor at Harvard Law School (1959–61), and served as Assistant Legal Adviser for UN Affairs of the U.S. Department of State (1961–66). In the years 1967–72, he was the executive director of the American Society of International Law and Burling Professor of International Law at the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University. He returned to the State Department in 1973 as Counselor on International Law and served as a Deputy Legal Adviser from 1974 to 1980. He was elected a member of the UN International Law Commission in 1977 and was appointed its Special Rapporteur on International Watercourses. In January 1981, he became a judge of the International Court of Justice, and, in 1997, President of the Court. Since his retirement from the Court in 2000, he has been a leading international arbitrator. He has lectured widely and is the author of The Secretary-General of the United Nations: His Political Powers and Practice (1952), International Arbitration: Three Salient Problems (1984) and Justice in International Law (1994). Judge Schwebel is a member of the Institut de Droit International, an Honorary Bencher of Gray's Inn, and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
