Abram Chayes

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Abram Chayes (July 18, 1922-April 16, 2000), American scholar of international law closely associated with the administration of John F. Kennedy.

Abram Chayes's full name was Abram Joseph Chayes, but he did not use his middle name. He was born in Chicago. Both his parents were lawyers.

He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945 as a field artillery officer in France, Holland, Germany, and Japan, leaving the service with the rank of captain. He received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Chayes graduated from Harvard Law School in 1949, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review.

After law school, Chayes was Legal Advisor to Governor Chester Bowles of Connecticut from 1949 to 1951, and then served in Washington, D.C., as Associate General Counsel of the President's Materials Policy Commission in 1951. He clerked for Justice Felix Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1951 to 1952, and practiced law privately with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., from 1952 to 1955.

In 1955 he accepted a teaching position at Harvard Law School.

In the late 1950s, Chayes was among the original members of a group of Harvard faculty members who worked on the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. He led the team that drafted the 1960 Democratic Convention platform, and was one of Kennedy's principal issues advisers during the campaign.

When Kennedy was elected, he worked as Legal Adviser to the State Department. Chayes played an important role in a number of major crises, including the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He also worked on the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 banning atmospheric nuclear tests.

In 1964, Chayes worked at the law firm of Ginsburg & Feldman in Washington, D.C., then returned to Harvard Law School in 1965, where in 1976 he became the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law. Chayes developed a new international law course at Harvard and co-authored a widely used book, International Legal Process. He also taught civil procedure and authored a widely cited article in the Harvard Law Review on the legal remedies and the difficulty of dealing with domestic social issues legally. He became professor emeritus in 1993, but continued to teach until incapacitated by complications from pancreatic cancer.

After leaving the Kennedy administration, Chayes remained politically active. He worked on the 1968 presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, wrote articles on nuclear arms control, co-authored a book with Jerome Wiesner, President Kennedy's Science Adviser, on Anti-Ballistic Missiles and strategic policy, and advised Democratic members of the Senate in the debate in the early 1970s over ABM deployment (he was a strong supporter of the ABM Treaty of 1972). In 1972, Chayes advised the presidential campaign of George McGovern on foreign policy matters, and in 1976 was a foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter. In the 1980s, Chayes argued on behalf of the Government of Nicaragua against the United States in the World Court, which ruled that the U.S. was guilty of "unlawful use of force" when it mined Nicaragua's harbors, and wrote articles arguing that the Reagan Administration was barred from testing and deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) under the 1972 ABM Treaty.

In 1996 he received the Peace Advocacy Award, with his wife, Antonia Handler Chayes, from the Massachusetts chapter of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security. In 1999-2000, Professor Chayes led a team of lawyers suing Slobodan Milošević in the U.S. Courts for genocide in Kosovo, and helped investigate corruption in Bosnia. He continued to work on international environmental law, teach, and serve on the Harvard interdisciplinary group on climate change. In 1999 he received the Harvard Law School Association Award (HLSA) recognizing his service as an "inspirational teacher and distinguished scholar, advocate for the rights of sovereign nations and the protection of the global environment, [and] beloved mentor to generations of Harvard Law students." The Law School celebrated his career with two days of panels and events concerning issues in international law on April 23-24, 1999.

[edit] Personal life

Abram Chayes married Antonia (Toni) Handler on December 24, 1947; they had five children, including journalist Sarah Chayes. Antonia Handler Chayes served as Undersecretary of the Air Force in the Carter Administration, and is a current visiting professor of International Politics and Law at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

[edit] Writings

  • The Cuban Missile Crisis: International Crisis and the Role of Law (Oxford University Press 1974; second edition, 1987).
  • The International Legal Process (Little, Brown, 1968, 1969) (with T. Ehrlich and A. Lowenfeld).
  • The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements (Harvard University Press, 1996 and 1998) (with Antonia Handler Chayes).

[edit] References

  • Pearson, Richard. "Abram Chayes, 77, Dies." Washington Post, Apr. 17, 2000 [1]
  • "Abram Chayes, International Law Specialist, Dies at 77." Harvard Gazette, Apr. 20, 2000. [2]
  • "Abram Chayes, 77, Leading International Law Specialist, Kennedy Administration's Chief International Lawyer, and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus." Pugwash, Apr. 16, 2000. [3]
Persondata
NAME Chayes, Abram
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American jurist
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago, Illinois
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 2000
PLACE OF DEATH Boston, Massachusetts