David Weissbrodt, JD

He has represented and served as an officer of several international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the Center for Victims of Torture, the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Readers International, and the International League for Human Rights. He also is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Society of International Law, and the editorial review boards of Human Rights Quarterly and the Netherlands Quarterly Human Rights.

In the Spring of 1996, Professor Weissbrodt was elected by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to serve a four-year term as the United States member of the U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. The Sub-Commission meets annually to authorize studies by its 26 members of such issues as human rights and disability, traditional health practices affecting the health of women and children, fair trial, and other topics. It is also responsible for responding to human rights violations in such countries as Burundi, Iran, Iraq, Rwanda, and Turkey. In addition to his work on the Sub-Commission, Prof. Weissbrodt is spending academic year 1996-97 on sabbatical with his family in Geneva, where he is teaching human rights law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.  In 2001 he was named chair of the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. He is the first U.S. citizen to head a U.N. human rights body since Eleanor Roosevelt. In 2002 he published, with Anti-Slavery International, the book Abolishing Slavery and Its Contemporary Forms, UN Doc. HR/Pub/02/4.

In 2003 Professor Weissbrodt, with 25 committee members, drafted the “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights” (U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2 (2003)). These norms concern the rights of workers, indigenous peoples, and the protection of children. The Norms articulate the responsibility of corporations not to benefit from war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other crimes against the human person including slave or coerced labor. Additional obligations concern provision of a safe and health working environment and remuneration commensurate with an adequate standard of living (contextually defined). Further obligations include not participating in bribery and other forms of corruption; adopt the precautionary principle with regard to product safety, promote physical and mental health, and observe local law and international agreements with regard to the environment, human rights (including freedom of conscience, religion and expression), public health and safety, bioethics and the precautionary principle toward realizing sustainable development.

In 2004, he published, with Donald Marshall, The Common Law Process of Torts.