Mark Janis and the American Tradition of International Law

Abstract

I come here today to celebrate Mark Janis and his new and important book on the American tradition of international law, I which represents only the latest of his many, wonderful contributions to international legal scholarship. I first met Mark twenty-seven years ago, in the fall of 1978, when I was interviewing for a job as a summer associate at Sullivan and Cromwell, where he was then a young associate. Mark took me out to lunch, and over the course of our lunchtime discussion, I leamed of his remarkable background: that in addition to working at one of the world's great international law firms, he had won a Rhodes scholarship, had graduated from Princeton, had served in the Navy, and had been, along with Bill Alford, who is also here today, an editor of and intellectual force behind the Harvard International Law Journal.