The Council of the German Society of International Law (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationales Recht – DGIR) has invited Professor Achilles Skordas to join the Society as a member. Membership in the Society is only acquired by a decision of the Council upon the written application of a member of the Council. The Society has about five hundred members, but scholars from outside the German-speaking academic space are only rarely invited to join.

The German Society of International Law was established in 1917, during the Great War, in view of the expected post-war period of peace in international relations. In April 1933, the Council of the Society, led by Walter Simons, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and former President of the Supreme Court of Germany (Reichsgericht), and Walther Schücking, Member of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), suspended the operation of the Society, in one of the first acts of defiance of the legal profession against National-Socialism.  In early 1934, the Nazis ordered the dissolution and liquidation of the Society, which was re-established in April 1949, a month before the Federal Republic of Germany was founded.

For further information see: http://www.dgfir.de/society/