Dr. Ruth Wedgwood is the Edward B. Burling Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and the Director of the International Law Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in Washington, D.C. She has over 30 years’ experience, including serving as a two-term U.S. member of the United Nations Committee on Human Rights. She is an expert in United Nations peacekeeping and politics, as well as American legal history.
Dr. Ruth Wedgwood is the Edward B. Burling Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and the Director of the International Law Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in Washington, D.C.
Previously, she has served as a two-term U.S. member of the United Nations Committee on Human Rights, sitting in Geneva and New York and reviewing the human rights performance of member governments. She has taught future foreign service officers, members of the United States military and foreign militaries, NGO professionals, and international law scholars. She served at the U.S. Naval War College as the Charles Stockton Professor of International Law, held a tenured professorship at the Yale Law School, served for more than a decade as the Senior Fellow for international law at the Council on Foreign Relations, and served as a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the CIA Historical Review Panel. She was also the global President of the 150-year-old International Law Association in London.
Dr. Wedgwood currently serves on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Advisory Committees on Public and Private International Law.
Her expertise center on human rights law, the laws of armed conflict, and United Nations peacekeeping and politics, as well as American legal history.
She is the author of numerous articles on international law and organizations, as well as American policy in the Balkans, the use of force, operational problems of peacekeeping, international tribunals, post-conflict reconstruction and the constitutional foreign affairs power published in the American Journal of International Law, Yale Law Journal and European Journal of International Law, as well as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Die Zeit, and International Herald Tribune.
Dr. Wedgwood received her B.A. from Harvard University and her J.D. from Yale Law School.