Hon. Edwin D. Williamson

Edwin D. Williamson has spent his entire professional career with Sullivan & Cromwell, as an associate, partner and now Senior Counsel, except for his service as the U.S. Department of State Legal Adviser from September 20, 1990 until January 20, 1993.

Mr. Williamson’s practice at Sullivan & Cromwell included international financing and transactions and corporate governance issues, as well as advice with respect to the United States’ economic sanctions laws and the ethics rules applicable to government officials. As the State Department Legal Adviser, Mr. Williamson was responsible for formulating the international legal position of the United States in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf conflict, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the concomitant issues of state succession, and the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the attempt to end the Serbian-Bosnian conflict.

In addition to public policy work in the international investment and corporate governance areas, Mr. Williamson is an active participant on panels and other forums involving public international law and national security issues, such as the domestic and international bases for the use of force, the role of the United States with respect to the International Criminal Court, the law of the sea and the application of international legal principles in the war against terrorism.

Mr. Williamson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, the Executive Committees of the Business and Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD and the U.S. Council for International Business, the United States Advisory Board of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and the Board of Directors of Triton Oil & Gas Limited.

A native of Darlington, South Carolina, Mr. Williamson graduated from the University of the South, Sewanee Tennessee, in 1961, from which he received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1992. He is a past Chair of its Board of Regents. He received his JD from NYU Law School in 1964, where he was a Root-Tilden scholar and an Editor of the NYU Law Review.

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