Ruth Wedgwood
Ruth Wedgwood is an American lawyer and university professor who holds the Edward B. Burling Chair in International Law and Diplomacy at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C.Family origins
Ruth Wedgwood is the daughter of labor lawyer Morris P. Glushien, former general counsel of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union who served as a World War II cryptanalyst, and Anne Sorelle Williams, an artist. In 1982 she married her Harvard classmate, National Institutes of Health immunologist Josiah F. Wedgwood, a member of the Wedgwood pottery family.Current career
She has expertise in the fields of international law, international criminal law, the law of armed conflict, and human rights law.
In 2002, Wedgwood was elected to serve as the U.S. member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. She currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Freedom House a nonpartisan NGO that promotes human rights and democracy world-wide. She was the first female law clerk to renowned federal judge Henry J. Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
and also served as law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court. Wedgwood received her undergraduate at Harvard where she graduated magna cum laude, and her legal education at Yale Law School, where she was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal. She is currently a member of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute's International Council.
