Willem Korthals Altes

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korthalsWillem F. Korthals Altes (1949) has been a judge in The Netherlands since 1995, serving in the civil law and the criminal law divisions of the trial court (Rechtbank or District Court of Amsterdam) and in the civil law division of the appellate court (Gerechtshof or Appellate Court of Arnhem).  He is currently Vice President in the Criminal Law Division of the District Court of Amsterdam. Having started his career as an attorney-at-law with Loeff & Van der Ploeg in Amsterdam (1976-1981), Mr. Korthals Altes moved to academia after two years of study and research at New York University (M.C.J. ’82).  He spent one year as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and in 1985 joined the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam, where he specialized in media and telecommunications law.  In 1989, he took his Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam on the basis of a treatise on the journalists’ privilege of confidentiality of sources.  He has published numerous articles on various aspects of media law, both in The Netherlands and abroad. Mr. Korthals Altes has since 1992 been a Visiting Professor at the Media Center of New York Law School, where he has taught a course on European Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law and Policy and will teach a course on European Criminal Law in 2011.  He has also acted as an instructor in many seminars and trainings on freedom of the press for judges, lawyers and journalists in former Communist countries, such as Russia, Georgia, Macedonia, Mongolia, Slovakia, Ukraine and Albania, and as a European Union expert in a Twinning Project in Turkey in 2007.