Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim (30 March 1858 – 7 October 1919) was a German jurist.
He has been characterized as the father of the modern discipline of international law, especially the hard legal positivist school of thought.
Oppenheim was born in Windecken near the Free City of Frankfurt, German Confederation, the son of a Jewish horse trader,[2] and educated at the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg.
In 1883, he went to the University of Leipzig, where he became a disciple of the renowned Professor of Criminal Law Karl Binding.
He first lectured at the London School of Economics and in 1908 became the Whewell Professor of International Law in the University of Cambridge.