Radhabinod Pal

Profile: Radhabinod Pal
Justice Radhabinod Pal was born in 1886 in the small village of Salimpur, Union of Taragunia, Daulatpur Upazila in Kushtia District in what is now Bangladesh. He studied mathematics and constitutional law at Presidency College, Kolkata, and at the Faculty of Law at the University of Calcutta. He worked as a professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Calcutta from 1923 until 1936. In 1937, he was invited to a general meeting of International Law Society and was elected as co-chairman. He was the first Indian to be elected as a chairman of the Society. He became a judge of the Calcutta High Court in 1941 and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1944. The Indian government installed him as a legal adviser in 1927 and dispatched him to the Tokyo Trials in 1946. Following the Tokyo Trials, he was elected to the United Nations’ International Law Commission, in which he served from 1953 to 1966. He served as chairman in 1958 and again in 1962.