Vespasian Pella
Vespasian V. Pella (4/17 January 1897, in Bucharest – 24 August 1952, in New York City) was a Romanian international law expert.
Legal career and opinions
During the interwar period, he promoted the notion of international criminal proceedings against heads of state found guilty of crimes against humanity by the establishment of a special international tribunal for that purpose. In 1938 he served as President of the Committee on Legal Questions of the League of Nations.[1]
He was elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1943.[2]
In 1944 he was appointed Romanian Ambassador to Switzerland, and in that capacity saved several Romanian Jews from deportation to Nazi occupied Poland.[3]
In 1948, he took part in formulating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [1].
He kept advocating the idea of establishing an international criminal court and, in 1950, presented his proposals to that effect to the International Law Commission (UN document A/CN.4/39), which deliberated over the issue in its meetings of 5 to 6 July 1950.[4]
Works
Books
- La criminalité collective des états et le droit pénal de l'avenir, Bucarest : Imprimerie de l'état, 1925
- "Vers l'unification du droit pénal par la création d'un Institut international auprès de la Société des Nations", (1928) 3 Études Crimin. 49–56
- La Guerre-Crime et les Criminels de Guerre, Paris, 1946
- The International Association of Penal Law and the Safeguarding of Peace, Paris, 1947
Articles
- "Towards an International Criminal Court" American Journal of International Law, Vol. 44, 1950, p. 37
References
- ^ "Indiana University Bloomington".
- ^ (in Romanian) Membrii Academiei Române din 1866 până în prezent at the Romanian Academy site
- ^ "The Romanian Jewish Community". www.romanianjewish.org. Archived from the original on 23 February 2004.
- ^ Yearbook of the ILC 1950, vol. 1, p. 165
External links
- Articles with Romanian-language sources (ro)
- Use dmy dates from November 2023
- Articles with FAST identifiers
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with J9U identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with NKC identifiers
- Articles with NTA identifiers
- Articles with VcBA identifiers
- Articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
- Articles with SUDOC identifiers
- 1897 births
- 1960 deaths
- Lawyers from Bucharest
- Ambassadors of Romania to Switzerland
- Corresponding members of the Romanian Academy
- Romanian expatriates in the United States
- Diplomats from Bucharest