Michael S. Greco is former president of the American Bar Association (2005-2006) and chairs the ABA Center for Human Rights, International Criminal Court Project and its Board of Advisors, and the ABA Working Group on a Right to Counsel in Civil Matters. He is a trial lawyer, arbitrator and mediator in resolving disputes throughout the U.S. and internationally. Since 2012 he has been Visiting Professor of the Practice of Law at Peking University School of Transnational Law, Shenzhen, China, and teaches the course International Criminal Justice.

As President of the ABA he appointed the ABA Task Force on Access to Civil Justice to consider providing desperately needed legal services to poor persons in the U.S. through recognition and implementation of a right to counsel in certain civil matters for violations of human rights that threaten basic needs – shelter, health, sustenance, safety and child custody. The ABA House of Delegates by unanimous vote endorsed a right to counsel in civil matters in the United States. The ABA Working Group will soon release the ABA Judges’ Manual for Appointment of Counsel in Civil Matters, to aid judges and counsel throughout the U.S. in determining applicable laws, rules and judicial discretion bearing on appointment of counsel in civil matters that threaten human rights.

He has been recognized for his work protecting legal aid to indigents in the U.S. and protecting human rights and the rule of law domestically and internationally. At the invitation of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights he served as an expert on human rights and legal aid, working with human rights experts in Latin America to improve the delivery of civil and criminal legal aid in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

He is a graduate of Princeton University and Boston College Law School. Prior to law school he taught English for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire. After law school he served as Law Clerk to the Hon. Leonard P. Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and as a Fellow at the Institute of Comparative Law, University of Florence, Italy.