David Scheffer is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law, where he teaches international criminal and human rights law. In 2012 he was appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as a Special Expert to advise on United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, and selected by Foreign Policy as one of the Top Global Thinkers of 2011. As the first US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001), Scheffer played a central role in advancing US efforts to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities during the Clinton era, as well as in negotiating the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the International Criminal Court (where he led the US delegation in UN talks). He also headed the Clinton administration’s Atrocities Prevention Inter-Agency Working Group (1999-2001). From 1993 to 1996, the period he will cover in his project, Scheffer was senior adviser/counsel to then US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, and served on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council.

 
Scheffer earned degrees from Harvard College, Oxford University, and Georgetown University Law Center, where he subsequently held a visiting professorship. He has also taught at George Washington University Law School, Duke University School of Law, and Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. His extensive publications cover international law and politics. His book All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, 2012) received the Book of the Year Award by the American National Section of L’Association Internationale de Droit Penal.