Flavia Lattanzi

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Flavia Lattanzi (born 4 October 1940) is an Italian lawyer who specializes in international law. Since 2007 she has served as an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and she is a professor at Roma Tre University. From 2003 to 2007 she was an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

She was born in Addis Ababa, then part of Italian East Africa (now Ethiopia). As a baby she survived a wartime camp ordeal. She studied law at Sapienza University of Rome, focusing on international law, and she speaks Italian, Russian and English.

Starting in 1966 she worked as a rapporteur at international conferences on humanitarian law, human rights and international criminal law. She taught at several universities, including D’Annunzio University (1966–1985), the University of Pisa and LUISS (1985–1990), and she became a full professor at the University of Sassari in 1990. She directed the Department of Public Legal Sciences at the University of Teramo (1995–2001) and helped run international programs in Arusha (1996–1998) and Gaborone (1999). She also led the European Public Law Center (1996–2000) and directed Teramo’s School of European Law (1997–2001).

Lattanzi advised Italy on creating the International Criminal Court and worked with the ICC Preparatory Commission (1998–2001). She directed an international master’s course on cooperation against transnational crime with partners from many European universities.

In 2005 she became a professor at Roma Tre University and joined several international bodies, including the International Fact-Finding Commission and the International Institute of Humanitarian Law.

Her first ICTY case was Rasim Delić. She wrote a dissent in the Šešelj case, arguing that the evidence supported guilty verdicts on several counts and criticizing the majority’s reasoning. In 2018 the Appeals Chamber partly overturned the verdict and found Šešelj guilty on one count, with a 10-year sentence. Also in 2018 she published an opinion concluding that the events of 1915–1916 meet the Genocide Convention.