Claus Kress

Claus Kreß is a Professor of International Law and Criminal Law. He holds the Chair for German and International Criminal Law and he is the Director of the Institute of International Peace and Security Law at the University of Cologne. His prior practice was in the German Federal Ministry of Justice on matters of criminal law and international law. In addition to his scholarly work, comprising more than 200 publications on the law on the use of force, the law of armed conflicts and international criminal law, he has been a member of Germany’s delegations in the negotiations regarding the International Criminal Court since 1998. In 2019, he was appointed Judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice in the Case of the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar). Since 2021, he serves as the Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on the Crime of Aggression. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall College at the University of Cambridge, a Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Northrhine-Westfalia, and the recipient of the 2014 M.C. Bassiouni Justice Award. He holds honorary doctorates from the State University Tbilisi of and the University of Huánuco. In 2018 he was the Francis Lieber Scholar at West Point. He was a Guest Professor at Columbia Law School, Kyoto University, Melbourne Law School, Paris 1 (Sorbonne), as well as a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Fiesole.