Bellagio Residency: November 2023
Project: “The Original Intent of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Reflections of a Founding Father”
David Scheffer is a distinguished international lawyer, scholar, and diplomat who was the first U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001), instrumental in the building of five war crimes tribunals, and head of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. talks creating the International Criminal Court (ICC). He came to Bellagio in November 2023 to articulate the original intent of the Rome Statute of the ICC and why the United States should ratify the Rome Statute. David was the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law (2006-2020) and is currently Professor of Practice at Arizona State University (Washington, D.C.) and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Expert on UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (2012-2018).