Gary Solis
Gary Solis is a retired U.S. Marine (26 years active duty), twice serving in Vietnam as a platoon and company commander. After Vietnam he earned his J.D. from the University of California, Davis, and was a Marine judge advocate for 17 years, prosecuting or judging 763 courts-martial.
His LL.M. (criminal law) is from George Washington Law, Ph.D. (law of war) from The London School of Economics & Political Science. He taught in the LSE’s Department of Law for three years, moving to the United States Military Academy in 1996, where he directed West Point’s law of war program for six years. There he received the 2006 Apgar Award as West Point’s outstanding professor.
After West Point retirement he was a 2007 Library of Congress scholar in residence. He was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center f or 12 years, teaching the law of armed conflict. He remains a West Point adjunct professor.
He was on the editorial board of the ICRC’s International Review of the Red Cross (2010-15), and a contributing writer for the ICRC’s new Commentaries to the Geneva Conventions (2013-20). He has been an expert witness in nine Guantánamo military commissions, is on the Board of Advisors of West Point’s Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, and is a member of the bars of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
His books are Marines and Military Law in Vietnam, and Son Thang: An American War Crime, and The Law of Armed Conflict (3rd ed.), awarded the American Society of International Law’s 2011 Certificate of Merit.
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