Jean Spiropoulos
Greek lawyer (1896-1972)
Jean Spiropoulos, or originally Ioannis Georgiou Spyropoulos (Greek: Ιωάννης Σπυρόπουλος, 16 October 1896 – 7 August 1972) was a Greek expert in international law.
He studied law at the Universities of Zürich and Leipzig. From 1928 onward, he taught Public International law at the Law School of the Aristotle University and several universities in Greece. From 1949 to 1957, he served as member of the International Law Commission and from 1958 to 1967, he served as judge at the International Court of Justice. (Since Mr. Spiropoulos also obtained an absolute majority of votes in the Security Council, he has been declared elected as a member of the International Court of Justice on 1 October 1957.)
At the 1st session of the International Law Commission in 1949, he sought to grant greater powers to the commission in choosing topics for its deliberations over the objections of those who sought to give greater emphasis to decisions by the UN General Assembly over such matters.
He served in 1951 as special rapporteur on the issue of definition of aggression.
Legal philosophy
Spiropoulos took part in the formulation of the Nuremberg principles in 1950. Regarding crimes against humanity, he believed that, contrary to the trend at the Nürnberg Trials to define the Nazi party as a criminal organization, it was impossible to determine legally the extent of culpability of governments or other organizations, and sought to define culpability of individuals only. He also considered acts of individuals inciting to civil strife in another country as crimes under international law, and also viewed organized terrorism as such.
“Jean Spiropoulos” enters the record as greek lawyer (1896-1972). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jean, Spiropoulos and Greek can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q834062. VIAF identifies the subject as 54527790. The Library of Congress control number is n88002283. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1972, 1928 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jean Spiropoulos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.