Thomas RØRDAM

Education:

• LLM, Aarhus University, Denmark, 1976
• LLM, University of California at Berkeley, USA, 1977

Career:

• Principal at the Ministry of Justice from 1977-1985, dealing with matters of personal, family and succession law as well as preparing legislation. Posted to the Ringsted Police Service as assistant prosecutor for 18 months from 1980-1982. Also served as an assistant prosecutor to the Public Prosecutor for Zealand for two and a half years from 1982-1985.
• Partner in the law firm Advokatfirma Nyborg & Rørdam, Copenhagen, from 1985-2002. Admission to practise as a public defence counsel with the right to plead legal aid cases in 1990 and entitled to plead before the Supreme Court in 1991. I worked mainly as a trial lawyer, spending about two-thirds of my time defending criminal cases and the rest on cases dealing with employment, property and public law. In addition to trial work, I counselled musicians on copyright issues.
• Supreme Court justice from 2002-2017 and president of the Supreme Court from 2017-2022

Writing and teaching:

• Adjunct teacher (adjunct associate professor) at the University of Copenhagen in personal, family and succession law (1978-1979), property law (1980-1992) and criminal law (1994-1996 and again from 2004).
• Teaches continuing education courses for attorneys and judges, among others, on subjects such as human rights (from 1993), criminal procedure (from 1996), forensic psychiatry (1998) and floating company charge (2005).
• I have written the book "Forsvareren" (a handbook for the counsel for the defence), and I am the co-author of  books on property law issues, criminal law and criminal procedure: I have also written numerous articles for professional journals on aspects of property law and criminal procedure in particular.

Professional affiliations:

• Member of the General Council of the Danish Bar and Law Society from 1991-1997, as well as member and chairman of several committees under the Council.
• Member of the Board of the National Association of Appointed Defence Attorneys in 1993 and chairman of the Association from 1997-2002.
• Chairman of the Danish chapter of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) from 2002-2004.
• Chairman of the Standing Committee on Criminal Law 2019-2021.

International experience:

• Part of Danida’s identification mission to Zambia in autumn 1999. One week spent in Zambia followed by participation in preparing the ”Identification Report/Areas for Possible Danida Support in the Area of Human Rights and Democratization”.
• Part of the legal assistance mission for the Danish Centre for Human Rights (now the Danish Institute for Human Rights) to Nepal in late 1999 and again in late 2000. One week spent in Nepal each time during which I held courses for Nepalese defence attorneys.
• Taught parliamentarians in Estonia and Latvia on Good Law Making in autumn 2000, under the auspices of the Council of the Baltic Sea States.
• Part of a seminar in Iran in autumn 2003, arranged by the Institute for Human Rights and the corresponding Iranian human rights organization, which included teaching judges and attorneys on topics including the defence counsel's role.
• Part of Danish Expert mission to Vietnam in May/June 2004, teaching Vietnamese prosecutors during two workshops held in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City on the adversarial system in criminal procedure.
• Taught members of the Nepalese Human Rights Commission on Legislative Drafting during a workshop over three days in Nepal, December 2005.
• Part of mission to Honduras in autumn 2008 regarding the upcoming election of justices to the Supreme Court of Honduras, arranged by DanChurchAid.