Ronald Sokol

Ronald P. Sokol (born 1939), lawyer and writer, is a member of the bar in the United States and France. He and his wife live in Aix-en-Provence, France. He is the author of Federal Habeas Corpus and Justice after Darwin and op-ed contributor to the International Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor.

Early life and education

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sokol attended Duke University for three years, leaving without a degree to study law at the University of Virginia where he was admitted in 1959. There he came under the influence of Hardy Cross Dillard, then dean of the law school and Daniel J. Meador, then James Monroe Professor and later Associate Attorney-General under President Carter, as well as Charles Horsky, a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. who taught civil rights on weekends. Horsky and Meador regularly argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and were both practitioners and scholars of constitutional litigation. Dillard was then President of the American Society of International Law and later became the American judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.