Ralph Zacklin

Ralph Zacklin was born in Leeds in 1937 and graduated from University College London with a law degree in 1959. After post-graduate studies in New York and Geneva where he specialized in public international law he worked for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace first in Geneva and then at their headquarters in New York before joining the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in 1973. At the United Nations he occupied a succession of progressively senior posts culminating with his appointment in 1998 as Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs. The author of a number of works concerning international law and international organizations,his most recent book is based on an expanded version of the Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures delivered at Cambridge University in 2008. The United Nations Secretariat and the Use of Force in a Unipolar World:Power vs.Principle takes the reader behind the scenes inside the Secretariat of the United Nations as the legal issues involving use of force in four major conflicts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries unfolded.