As a crowning achievement to a long and illustrious career in the international arena, Hisashi Owada of Japan was elected on February 6, 2009 as the first Japanese President of the International Court of Justice. He was first elected to the Court in 2003.

Judge Owada was born September 18, 1932 in Niigata, Japan. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Tokyo in1955, and an LL.B degree from Cambridge University the following year. He immediately entered the foreign service of Japan, assigned to posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo and then in the Japanese embassies in the United States and Soviet Union.

He rose rapidly in the Japanese government, eventually becoming Private Secretary to the Japanese Prime Minister. He has held several ambassadorships, including to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1988-1989, and to the United Nations from 1994 to 1998.

Immediately before his appointment to the ICJ he served as a professor of international law at Waseda University, and was President of the Japanese Institute of International Affairs.

Judge Owada has also enjoyed a distinguished academic career. He has been a professor of international law at Waseda University in Japan, and has been a visiting professor of international law at Harvard Law School; Columbia Law School; New York University Law School; Trinity College, Cambridge University; and the Hague Academy of International Law. He has also been awarded three honorary degrees.

In 1992 he was elected an Officier in the Legion d’Honneur in France, and in 1994 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany.

Judge Owada now has ties to Japanese royalty. In 1993 his daughter, Masako Owada, a diplomat in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, married Crown Prince Hiro, the heir to the Japanese throne.