Guide to International Law Careers

Anneke Smit and Christopher Waters have produced a very handly Guide to International Law Careers. It is a 70-page booklet published by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, designed, as it says, for students studying public international law who say: ‘This is fascinating, but what can I do with it?’ Smit and Waters provide the answers in a most readable and accessible manner. The only drawback is that it is not available on line in pdf. You will have to order it from the British Institute, and it costs GBP25 for non members. Unfortunately, this creates a bit of an obstacle for its intended readership..

Condolences?

A few days after the death of Slobodan Milosevic, we discussed the development in my international criminal law class. I asked my students whether it was appropriate, under the circumstances, to express condolances to his family and loved ones, as we do normally in Ireland. The views were rather mixed and we never reached a conclusion.
Today, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda issued a press release announcing the death of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, who passed away this morning while serving a 32-year sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity. The press release concludes: 'The ICTR and the Benin Government extend their condolences to the family of Jean Bosco Barayagwiza.'
I don't think the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia does anything similar. Indeed, I seem to recall Prosecutor Carla del Ponte making some rather unpleasant comments at the time of the death of Milosevic that seemed contrary to the rule that one should 'never speak ill of the dead'. Recently, Rasim Delic, who is on appeal from a conviction for war crimes and a three-year sentence, passed away, but the Tribunal didn't issue any press release (see the blog item on this by Dov Jacobs).
My inclination with Milosevic was to express sympathy to his family. It is a way of reaffirming out common humanity. We are not judging demons, we are judging other human beings. Moreover, they have families that have not been found guilty and may in fact have had no role whatsoever in the crimes. I don't know anything about Barayagwiza's family, but perhaps he has lovely grandchildren, and they have lost their grandfather, however evil he may have been.
When Hitler committed suicide, in the final days of the war, Ireland's prime minister at the time, Eamon de Valera, went to the German mission in Dublin to sign the book of condolances. It has been a matter of great debate ever since, cited by some as evidence of Nazi leanings and others of uncompromising neutrality. Apparently he did it despite advice from the civil servants in the Department of External Affairs to the contrary.
What do readers of the blog think? Was the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda correct to express its condolances to the Barayagwiza family?

UN Quinquennial Report on Death Penalty Now Available

The latest quinquennial report on the status of the death penalty is now available on the website of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. You will find it by a search using the UN document number E/2010/10 (you can also google the document number). This is the eighth such report, the first having appeared in 1975. I was the consultant to the UN in the preparation of the report.
The report shows a continuing progress in abolition, with a total of 149 States that are abolitionist de jure or de facto, and 47 that are retentionist. There is a graph showing the evolution of the situation since 1975, when a large majority of States still retained capital punishment. The report highlights the significance of the de facto abolitionist category, which consists of States that have not used the death penalty for ten years. Its usefulness has been debated, because of concerns that States return to capital punishment despite a lengthy period of disuse. But the report shows that such a return is very rare. As a general rule, where a State has been ten years without an execution, it is highly unlikely that it will ever again use the death penalty.
The report also examines the pattern of executions in States where the dath penalty is retained. In most such States, there has been a marked decline in the rate of execution.

Whitney Harris at Nuremberg

In a post earlier today, I reported the sad news of the passing of Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney Harris. I went back to the proceedings of the trial to track down his participation. The full 42 volumes are available in pdf.
Whitney Harrris presented the Kaltenbruner case on 2-3 January 1946 (see Vol. 4, p. 288-311). In the final days of the trial, he cross examined two of the Gestapo witnesses, Karl Rudolf Werner Best and Karl Heinz Hofi'mann (Vol. 20, pp. 141-154, 182), and presented a few additional exhibits (Vol. 20, pp. 262, 562, Vol. 21, p. 300).

Celebrity Buzz at Taylor Trial

Some time ago, actress Mia Farrow testify in the Charles Taylor trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Her evidence was what common lawyers would call hearsay: she said that supermodel Naomi Campbell had told her that she had been given an uncut diamond by Charles Taylor in South Africa. Farrow, Campbell and Taylor were all staying at the same hotel, where they were guests of Nelson Mandela. But Campbell has apparently said that she was never given a diamond, and she is refusing to come to The Hague to testify: see http://blogs.abcnews.com/nightlinedailyline/2010/04/mia-farrow-naomi-campbells-blood-diamond.html; http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/naomi_given_blood_diamond_Nzjx9j4aHeo8LPkZBmxFFM.
Even if the story is actually true, what does it prove? That Charles Taylor had diamonds? That he might have used them to buy arms? It seems a long way from crimes against humanity committed in Sierra Leone.

Whitney Harris, 1912-2010

Whitney Robson Harris died on Wednesday at his home in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the last surviving prosecutor who appeared before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg during the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. I've known Whitney for many years, visiting him on several occasions in St. Louis, but also seeing each other at conferences elsewhere in the United States and in Europe. Most recently, he has been involved in the crimes against humanity convention project which is directed by Leila Sadat of Washington University.
Whitney was an inspiring, devoted and very charming man, who made great contributions to international criminal justice. My sympathies go out to Anna and the other members of his family.

This is the very fine obituary prepared by Prof. John Q. Barrett of St. John's University:

At Nuremberg during 1945 and 1946, then Lieutenant-Commander Harris (United States Navy), serving as U.S. Trial Counsel, was primarily responsible for the prosecutions of defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, former Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, or Reich Main Security Office), and defendant organizations the RSHA, the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service). Whitney Harris also was a principal, trusted aide to U.S. chief prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson and assisted him throughout the trial, including during his cross-examination of defendant Hermann Goering.
Whitney Harris was a graduate of the University of Washington and the University of California Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law. As a young lawyer, he was in private practice in Los Angeles. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy. During his World War II Navy service, he was recruited to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where his assignments included work relating to war crimes. In London during summer 1945, he assisted Justice Jackson’s staff informally. He soon was recruited to join the staff and became one of its most important members at Nuremberg.
Following Nuremberg, Whitney Harris served successively as Chief of Legal Advice during the Berlin Blockade, as a law professor at Southern Methodist University, as director of the Hoover Commission's Legal Services Task Force, as the first Executive Director of the American Bar Association, and as Solicitor General of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in St. Louis. He authored Tyranny on Trial, a monumental account of the Nuremberg case and evidence. He also became a generous philanthropist, including at Washington University in St. Louis, and a leader and conscience in his community.
In recent years, Whitney Harris devoted his energies primarily to speaking, writing, teaching and embodying the past, the progress and the hopeful future of international law and justice. He was a strong supporter of modern international tribunals, including the court for the former Yugoslavia, the court for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court. As Whitney knew best and explained powerfully, each of those tribunals, and the world progress they can embody and assist, grew from and builds upon the principles and achievements of Nuremberg.
On YouTube, you can find this and much more that records Whitney’s presence, his eloquence and his teaching:
· footage of Whitney Harris at Nuremberg;
· Whitney Harris in 2001 reading excerpts from Justice Jackson’s introduction to Tyranny on Trial; and
· Whitney Harris in 2008 speaking about Nuremberg.

* * *

At Nuremberg, Justice Jackson told that IMT during his opening argument that “[t]he real complaining party at your bar is Civilization.” Whitney Harris is survived by his beloved wife Anna, by devoted family members, by legions of friends and admirers, by his many students, and by his former client, Civilization. He represented it beautifully, and he left it with great confidence that it is in good hands.

Crime et châtiment

I’m grounded by the volcano, stuck in Paris (worse things have happened to me), and today saw a fabulous exhibition entitled Crime et châtiment at the Musée d’Orsay. France’s great abolitionist, Robert Badinter, is the mastermind of the special exhibit. It includes a real guillotine, one of two or three remaining in France. Senator Badinter apparently located it in a military prison.
Called the ‘widow’, it is said to be the last guillotine used in France. At the exhibit it is veiled in black, alongside a citation from Victor Hugo: 'One can have a certain indifference about the death penalty, not quite knowing whether to say yes or no…until one has seen the guillotine.'
Other works include Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair, which I have reproduced. There is a great book accompanying the exhibition

More Genocide Hyperbole, This Time from Argentina

This morning's English edition of El Pais (it is a supplement to the International Herald Tribune)has a story about charges of genocide being filed in Argentina in a private prosecution based upon universal jurisdiction concerning crimes committed under the Spanish dictatorship. According to the report, the plaintiffs allege that their relatives were killed by the Franco regime. We can add this one to the list of frivolous genocide charges. It is a shame that the word is so abused. Terrible crimes were committed under Franco, but I don't think any serious legal analysis could lead to the charge of genocide. Extravagant use of the term only detracts from the gravity of the cases where it is truly appropriate, like the Holocaust, and the massacres of Armenians and Rwandan Tutsi. I couldn't find the English version on the internet, but this seems to be the original Spanish version in El Pais.

Vince Del Buono

My friend Vince Del Buono died a couple of days ago. I first got to know Vince in 1968, more than forty years ago, when we were university students. I was looking forward to seeing him at the UN Criminal Justice Congress in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil this week. Alas, he didn’t make it. He will be greatly missed by its many friends and admirers in Canada and around the world. Our sympathies go out to Jennifer and his family.
This is the obituary in the Toronto Star.

VINCENT DEL BUONO Passed away peacefully with his family by his side at the Greater Niagara General Hospital on April 13, 2010 at the age of 60. Loving husband of Jennifer Pothier. Beloved son of Anna Del Buono and brother of Robert Del Buono. Cherished son-in-law of Theresa Pothier. Vincent was born May 16, 1949 in Casacalenda, Italy and immigrated to Canada at the age of four (though he retained close ties to his ancestral home and remained fiercely proud of his Italian heritage). Brought up in the Toronto neighbourhood of St. Clair and the Junction and educated at York University's Glendon College (BA, 1972) and the University of Toronto (MA, 1975, LLM, 1976), Vince was called to the bar in Alberta and went on to a distinguished international career in the fields of criminal law reform, justice, security and human rights. He spent a decade as Senior Counsel with the Law Reform Commission of Canada and the Department of Justice and was founding President of both the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law and the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy in Vancouver. During the 1990s, he played senior roles at the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime in Vienna and with the UN's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He also served as Deputy Secretary-General of Amnesty International in London. From 2002 to 2007, he led the British Council's Access to Justice program in Nigeria, for which work he was honoured by investiture into the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. (He was equally proud of his traditional Nigerian titles: The King's Law Maker and The Emir's Chief Mediator.) Most recently, he had returned to Canada after many years abroad and having settled into an idyllic lakeside home at Niagara-on-the-Lake, was active as CEO of the Niagara 1812 Bicentennial Legacy Council. Over the years, Vince held academic appointments at McGill University, the Universities of Ottawa and British Columbia, Southwestern School of Law in Los Angeles and the State University of New York at Buffalo. He retained particularly close ties with York University (where he was a visiting Scholar and an ongoing Senior Fellow of Glendon School of Public and International Affairs) and with Massey College at the University of Toronto (where he had been Don of Hall as a graduate student and more recently was an inaugural recipient of the Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson Laureateship in Public Service). Vincent had a profound positive impact on numerous institutions and individuals. He was passionately committed to the cause of human rights, which for him was not just a theoretical concept, but a living reality. He maintained a wide network of close contacts around the world, whom he touched for good in countless ways - both public and private - and who continue to cherish his wisdom, insight, compassion and humour. Vincent's family will receive friends at the MORLEY BEDFORD FUNERAL SERVICES, 159 Eglinton Avenue West, Toronto on Friday, April 16th from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. A Funeral Liturgy will be held at the Newman Centre, St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church, 50 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto on Saturday, April 17th at 10:30 a.m. A Memorial Service will be held in St. Catharines at the Unitarian Congregation of Niagara, 223 Church Street, on May 2, 2010 at 2 p.m. If desired, memorial donations can be made to Amnesty International or the Terry Fox Foundation would be appreciated by the family.

Crimes Against Humanity Treaty Inititiave in Labour Party Programme

The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, directed by Professor Leila Sadat of Washington University Law School, marked some important progress when its proposed draft convention on crimes against humanity was endorsed in the programme of the United Kingdom Labour Party which is guiding its campaign in the current election. The Initiative has brought together many leading experts, scholars and practitioners in an effort to fill a gap in international law.