Judge Sang-Hyun Song

President of the International Criminal Court

Judge Sang-Hyun Song (Republic of Korea), President of the International Criminal Court Judge as of 11 March 2003, for a term of three years, and re- elected in 2006 for a further full term of nine years. President of the Court as of 11 March 2009, for a term of three years, and re-elected on 11 March 2012 for another three-year period. Assigned to the Appeals Division. Elected from the Asian Group of States, list A.

Judge Song (1941) has extensive practical and academic experience in the areas of court management, civil and criminal procedure, and the law of evidence. For more than thirty years, he taught as a professor of law at Seoul National University Law School, beginning in 1972. He has also held visiting professorships at a number of law schools, including Harvard, New York University, Melbourne and Wellington. Judge Song started his legal career as a judge-advocate in the Korean army and later as a foreign attorney in a New York law firm. He has served as a member of the advisory committee to the Korean Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice. As such, he led initiatives to reform the national litigation system and the criminal justice system, particularly the reform of the Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Court Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the prison system. Judge Song has vast experience in relevant areas of international law, principally international humanitarian law and human rights law. He is co-founder of the Legal Aid Centre for Women, and of the Childhood Leukaemia Foundation in Seoul, and the President of UNICEF/KOREA. Judge Song is also the respected author of several publications on relevant legal issues, and the recipient of the highest decoration of the Korean Government (MUNGUNGHWA, 2011).

Links for Judge Sang-Hyun Song
Pursuing Universal Acceptance of the Rome Statute and Other Challenges for the
Evolving System of International Criminal Justice


This page last updated February 18, 2013 jdb