Business & Government

World Court Elects UVA Graduate President of the International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ principal judicial body, has elected as president Judge Yuji Iwasawa, a 1997 graduate of the University of Virginia’s School of Law, who earned a Doctor of Juridical Science.

Last week the court, also called the World Court, announced Iwasawa’s term ends in February 2027. He replaces Nawaf Salam, who resigned to become prime minister of Lebanon.

Iwasawa joined the World Court in 2018 to fill a vacancy and was re-elected in 2020. He is the first Law School graduate to serve as a judge on the court since former UVA Law Dean Hardy Cross Dillard, a 1927 graduate, who served during the 1970s.

“International law sets very important rules that states should comply with,” Iwasawa told UVA Lawyer in 2018. “It’s a very important tool to maintain order in an international society. We should safeguard that. It serves the purposes of all countries to support international law.”

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Prior to his election, Iwasawa was a professor of international law at the University of Tokyo. He has chaired the U.N.’s Human Rights Committee and served on the U.N.’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Permanent Group of Experts under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Subsidies. He has also been the president of the Japanese Society of International Law, vice chair of the International Law Association, and judge and vice president of the Manila, Philippines-based Asian Development Bank’s Administrative Tribunal.

Iwasawa has written or contributed to 10 books in Japanese and five in English on international law and organizations. He has served as a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and a lecturer at The Hague Academy of International Law.

The World Court, based at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands, has 15 judges the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council elects for nine-year terms. The court resolves disputes between member states with binding rulings and provides advisory opinions on legal questions from the U.N. General Assembly or the Security Council.

Portrait of The World Court Building, located in the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands.

The World Court is located in the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands. It has 15 judges whom the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council elects for nine-year terms.

UVA Law professor Paul B. Stephan, who graduated from the Law School in1977, taught Iwasawa. He said it was a “great honor” for his former student to be named president.

It “(reflects) the confidence that his colleagues have in him, and (is) a tribute to his judicial temperament, which straddles the divergent legal cultures from which the members of the court come.”

Before earning his degree at UVA, Iwasawa was a law professor at Osaka City University and the University of Tokyo.

He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law program and a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School.