Alfred Verdross or Verdroß or Verdroß-Droßberg (until 1919, Edler von Droßberg; 22 February 1890 – 24 April 1980) was an Austrian international lawyer and judge at the European Court of Human Rights.
After having served as an Austrian foreign ministry official, he became professor of public international law, private international law and philosophy of law at the University of Vienna. He was a pan-German nationalist and an early sympathizer with Nazism, but did not join the Nazi party. Following the German occupation of Austria, he was suspended from his teaching assignments, but from mid-1939 onwards he was allowed to resume the teaching of international law. After the end of World War II he continued his academic career in Vienna and became, among other things, member of the International Law Commission, member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, president of the Institut de Droit International and, from 1959 to 1977, judge at the European Court of Human Rights.
Together with Hans Kelsen, and Josef L. Kunz, he was one the main exponents of the Vienna school of legal theory. He was an early proponent and chief theorist of the ius cogens doctrine and of the monist theory of the relationship between international and national law, and is considered one of the most influential international lawyers of the 20th century.
Life
Early years
Alfred Verdross was born on 22 February 1890 in Innsbruck as the son of the then lieutenant and later general of the Austro-Hungarian army, . He attended school in Rovereto and Brixen and then studied law at the universities of Vienna, Munich (with Franz Brentano) and Lausanne. In 1913 he was awarded a doctorate at the University of Vienna. As a student in Vienna he met Hans Kelsen, whose private seminars he attended during World War I.
In 1916, Verdross passed the judges' examination and subsequently entered military service as first lieutenant auditor () at the Supreme Military Court () in Vienna. Before the end of the war, on 15 January 1918 Verdross left the military service and was assigned to the legal services of the Imperial and Royal Foreign Ministry. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy he became secretary to the Austrian Legation in Berlin. In this capacity, he was among the experts who in December 1918 contributed to the parliamentary debates leading up to the drafting of the Weimar Constitution, and in 1919 an essay of his succeeded in persuading the parliamentary Constitutional commission to redraft the constitutional provision on international law. In December 1920 he returned to Vienna, where he was employed in the International Law Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs until 1924, and from 1923 also as a professor at the Consular Academy. He habilitated at the University of Vienna in 1921. In 1924 was appointed associate professor () of philosophy of law and in 1925 full professor of public international law, private international law and philosophy of law at the University of Vienna, where he served as a member of the Law Faculty until his retirement in 1961.
After 1924 Verdross became director and coeditor of the ("Journal of Public Law"), a public law journal founded upon the initiative of Kelsen, who also worked as an editor. In 1927 he was elected a correspondent member of the Institute for International Law in Kiel and in 1928, an associate of the Institut de droit international. In 1927 he gave his first Hague Lectures, followed by his general course in 1929 and two monographic courses in 1931 and 1935; in 1931 he became a member of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy of International Law. In 1926–1929, he was appointed substitute member of the Austrian Constitutional Court, in 1928, and in 1931–1933 Dean of the Vienna Faculty of Law.
Austria moved decisively toward an autocratic fascist state when Chancellor Dollfuss began ruling by decree after the self- elimination of parliament in 1933. Verdross was offered a position as Minister of Justice, but refused, although he was personally not hostile to the values of Austrofascism. Together with the law school deans of Graz and Innsbruck, he even lodged a formal protest against the breach of the constitution by the new authoritarian government. He agreed to join Dolfuss's Austrian nationalist party, the Fatherland Front, only on the condition that he would not renounce "the ultimate goal of the unification of all Germans", i.e., his pan-Germanist ideals.