In July 1948, while on a lecture tour in Colorado, Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht, the Whewell Chair of International Law at the University of Cambridge, received two urgent letters. The first was from the fledgling State of Israel, locked in a bitter war of independence against its Arab neighbors. The Israeli government now faced a new legal challenge. The Syrians had sought a ruling from the International Court of Justice invalidating the legal basis for the Jewish State’s Declaration of Independence. The Israelis turned to Lauterpacht to ask what they should do. Almost to the day this request for help arrived, Lauterpacht received a similar entreaty from the tiny Indian Principality of Hyderabad. This princely kingdom had the misfortune of being located physically in the heart of the new Union of India. With a population that was 85 percent Hindu and a Muslim ruler reputed to be the richest man in the world, Hyderabad had attempted to maintain its independence, declining to join either Pakistan or India.