Women at Nuremberg redux

At the IntLawGrrls-sponsored "Women and International Criminal Law" roundtable this Friday, I'll have the privilege to hear comments on the latest of my research regarding women who played roles in the Allies' Trial of the Major War Criminals, as well as subsequent trials that the United States held after World War II at Nuremberg, Germany.
The research owes much to IntLawGrrls' alumna Diane Orentlicher, now Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, at the U.S. Department of State. She dedicated her work on the blog to "Beatrice," the presumed name of an unremembered woman who prosecuted defendants at Nuremberg. Eventually, Diane determined that any number of women might have been "Beatrice." The most likely candidate was "Ceil" Goetz (above right); the quest for her and her sisters at Nuremberg first was explored in my "Women at Nuremberg" series of blog posts.
My roundtable essay, Cecelia Goetz, Woman at Nuremberg, tells more about Goetz, an American woman who turned 30 at Nuremberg. Included are not only details on how and why she became a prosecutor in the Krupp trial, but also a life story marked by many “first woman” chapters -- on the law review at New York University School of Law, at the U.S. Department of Justice, and, after Nuremberg, in the federal judiciary.
This essay follows upon another overview, "Portraits of Woman at Nuremberg," published recently in Proceedings of the Third International Humanitarian Law Dialogs (Elizabeth Andersen & David M. Crane eds., 2010). "Portraits" places women at the trials within the context of social developments during the post-World War II era. Mentioned are women who were defendants, journalists, or witnesses; however, the focus is on women, mostly Americans, who served as prosecutors at Nuremberg. Among the latter was Sadie Arbuthnot, depicted at left in a photo recently discovered in Harvard Library's digital trove.
Later a judge in the United States' court system in Germany and after marriage a lawyer at NASA, Arbuthnot too was a woman at Nuremberg.
More to come.

Princeton law fellowships

The Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University, whose Director is our colleague Kim Lane Scheppele, is seeking applications from outstanding faculty, independent scholars, lawyers, and judges for up to 6 residential LAPA Fellowships to be awarded for the 2011-2012 academic year.
Past Fellows include many international or comparative law scholars, including a number of IntLawGrrls' guests/alumnae: Jeannine Bell (prior posts), Mary L. Dudziak (prior posts), Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (prior posts), and Diane Orentlicher (prior posts).
Successful candidates for the 2011-2012 awards will conduct substantial research on topics broadly related to legal studies. Among the Fellows will be 4 general Fellows, 1 Microsoft/LAPA Fellow specializing in intellectual property or the legal regulation of the economy, and 1 Mellon/LAPA Fellow specializing in law and the humanities.
Applicants must have a doctorate, J.D., or equivalent postgraduate degree.
Details and the online application form are available here. Deadline is 5 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, November 8, 2010.

Happy 3d birthday to us! Again.

Today we IntLawGrrls celebrate our 2d 3d birthday.
Huh?
Well, in an unintended display of math anxiety, this founder/'Grrl declared it our golden birthday on this day a year ago -- that is, said then that we'd juist turned 3 on the 3d day of the 3d month. In fact, though we were entering our 3d year, it had only been 2 years since the launch of this blog on "international law, policy, practice." But no one called us on the arithmetic error, and so today we get to celebrate gold all over again.
Since we announced our birth on what folks in Japan marked as Girls Day 2007, we've grown like Topsy.
We're proud cosponsors of 2 autumn conferences -- 2009 and, yet to come, 2010.
We're proud that 'Grrls have been invited to speak at other conferences, to contribute scholarship, blog posts, and op-eds, on account of their work here.
Contributing more than 3,000 posts have been nearly 3 dozen permanent IntLawGrrls voices, plus more than 100 women who've joined us as guests. 'Grrls and guests/alumnae have ties to nearly 2 dozen countries in our world. As listed in full in our righthand column, we include, to name a very few, distinguished presidents Lucy Reed and Hélène Ruiz Fabri, distinguished scholars like Mireille Delmas-Marty and Hilary Charlesworth (and so many others), distinguished diplomat Diane Orentlicher, distinguished judges Patricia M. Wald and Marilyn J. Kaman, and distinguished U.N. expert Gay McDougall. And we've been proud over the years to honor no fewer than 70 transnational foremothers -- women who've inspired us, from "A" (Alice Paul) to "V" (Virginia Leary).
To all our contributors and all our readers -- today we will pass the milestone of 400,000 viewings since our founding! -- heartfelt thanks. We look forward to a Year 4 future of sharing lots more good things.

The U.S. & the ICC: A Rapprochement

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the U.S. will attend the upcoming Assembly of State Parties meetings in The Hague as well as the first Review Conference scheduled for June 2010 in Kampala. In the article, Ambassador-at Large for War Crimes Steven Rapp (right) made clear that although the U.S. was re-engaging with the ICC, it would not join the Court any time soon.
The agenda (annotated) for the November meetings includes most importantly the outstanding crime of aggression.
In addition, there will be general stock-taking and reporting, votes on judicial and trust fund board of directors vacancies, and discussions about the new premises, the budget and an audit.
The credit for this important development no doubt goes to:
► Harold Hongju Koh (bottom right), Legal Advisor to the State Department, whose confirmation hearing we covered extensively;
► Steven Rapp (top right), whose nomination we cheered; and
► IntLawGrrls alumna Diane Orentlicher (left), Deputy Ambassador for War Crimes whom we've profiled.
Kudos to all!

All our best to Diane Orentlicher as she heads to State's Office of War Crimes Issues

It is IntLawGrrls' great honor to announce that one of our longtime members, Diane Orentlicher, has just started as Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, at the U.S. Department of State!
An internationally renowned expert in international criminal law, Diane will work with Stephen J. Rapp, the former Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone who assumed his duties as Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues at the beginning of September. (prior post) She'll be an integral player in the work of the office, which, as stated on its website:
► "advises the Secretary of State directly and formulates U.S. policy responses to atrocities committed in areas of conflict and elsewhere throughout the world";
► "coordinates U.S. Government support for war crimes accountability in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Iraq, and other regions where crimes have been committed against civilian populations on a massive scale"; and
► "works closely with other governments, international institutions, and non-government organizations, and with the courts themselves, to see that international and domestic war crimes tribunals succeed in their efforts to bring those responsible for such crimes to justice."
Diane will be leaving her position as Professor of International Law and Co-Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Washington College of the Law, American University, Washington D.C., which has posted on her appointment here. She's also served inter alia on the boards of the Open Society Justice Initiative and (along with IntLawGrrl Beth Hillman and yours truly) of the National Institute of Military Justice. Diane served as an independent expert on combating impunity by September 2004 appointment of then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
We at IntLawGrrls will miss our colleague-turned-guest/alumna, whose transnational foremother, "Beatrice," was the inspiration for our Women at Nuremberg series. We look forward to all good things at State.
To all of us, Diane writes:

'It's been an honor to be a small part of an incredible project. I've learned so much from the smartest 'Grrls around -- and will remain an avid reader of IntLawGrrls' sensational posts.'

Heartfelt congratulations, Diane!

Go On! IntLawGrrls cosponsors 3d IHL Dialogs, on "Women in International Criminal Law"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Delighted to announce that for the 1st time ever, IntLawGrrls is cosponsoring an international law conference!
It's the 3d Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, to be held August 31-September 1 at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, a community near Buffalo in upstate New York.
As posted here and here, last year's dialogs marked the 60th anniversary of the Convention Against Genocide; the 1st year, the 100th anniversary of the 1907 Hague Rules on the laws of war. This year's theme -- "Honoring Women in International Criminal Law From Nuremberg to the ICC" -- is ready-made for IntLawGrrls the world over. It's no surprise, then, that a number of 'Grrls were enlisted as the event was put together by our colleague David M. Crane, formerly Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, now law professor at Syracuse University College of Law.
Our thanks to David, who's also the founder Impunity Watch blog (one of the "connections" in our righthand column), both for the invitation and for welcoming IntLawGrrls blog as a cosponsor. Also cosponsoring are the Robert H. Jackson Center in nearby Jamestown, N.Y., which features the work of the Supreme Court Justice who served as Chief U.S. Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial of the Major War Criminals, Impunity Watch/Syracuse Law, the American Society of International Law, the Enough Project of the Center for American Progress, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Events on the program include:
Monday, August 31:
► Opening remarks, including a moment of silence for Dr. Alison Des Forges, the Human Rights Watch researcher who died in a plane crash this past February, as we then posted.
►Keynote lecture entitled "Katherine Fite, A Prosecutor at Nuremberg," by John Q. Barrett, Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law, New York, and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. As Barrett will detail, Katherine Boardman Fite, who'd received her law degree from Yale in 1930, served as Jackson's assistant.
► Keynote lecture entitled "Women at Nuremberg," by me, IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann, Professor of Law and Director of the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, and an ASIL Vice President. The presentation will be based on my IntLawGrrls series of the same name.
► An update from the current prosecutors, to be moderated by Leila Nadya Sadat, Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law and Director of the Harris Institute at Washington University School of Law, St. Louis. That institute's namesake, former Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney R. Harris, also is expected to attend these 3d annual dialogs.
► Luncheon speech by Gayle E. Smith (left), a cofounder of the Enough Project who's now a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama. Introducing her will be Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy advisor at the Enough Project.
► Roundtable discussion with the prosecutors on "Gender Crimes at the International Level," moderated by IntLawGrrl Diane Orentlicher, Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of the Law.
► A briefing by Sadat on the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative about which IntLawGrrls has posted here and here.
► Dinner speech by the Honorable Patricia M. Wald (right), formerly Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and, subsequently, a Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Introducing Judge Wald will be IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed, ASIL President, Freshfields partner, and a member of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, about which she's posted.
► Showing of NBC's The Wanted, with members of the cast.
Tuesday, September 1:
► "International Criminal Law Year in Review," presented by Michael P. Scharf, Professor of Law and Director of the Cox Center.
► "Reflections on Women in International Criminal Law," by the Honorable Marilyn J. Kaman (below right), Presiding Judge, Probate/Mental Health Court, Hennepin County, Minnesota, and from 2002-2003 a U.N.-appointed judge in Kosovo, where she presided over cases involving war crimes, organized crime, ethnically motivated disputes, and human trafficking.
► Roundtable with 3 women who've worked as international trial attorneys: Christine H. Chung, partner at Quinn Emmanuel and former senior trial attorney, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court (prior post); Lesley Taylor, Special Court for Sierra Leone; and Renifa Madenga, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Moderated by Dr. Kelly Askin, IntLawGrrl and Senior Legal Officer, International Justice, Open Society Justice Initiative.
► Lunch speech by Siri Frigaard (above left), Chief Public Prosecutor, Norwegian National Authority for Prosecution of Organised and Other Serious Crime. Former ICC attorney Chung will introduce her.
► Elizabeth Andersen, ASIL Executive Director, will lead the signing of the 3d Chautauqua Declaration.
Prosecutors expected to attend, besides those already named, include: Fatou Bensouda (below left), ICC Deputy Prosecutor (prior posts here and here); William Caming, former trial counsel at Nuremberg; Desmond DeSilva, former Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone; Richard Goldstone, formerly the ICTY-ICTR Chief Prosecutor and a Justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and currently leading a U.N. inquiry into the 2008-2009 conflict in the Gaza Strip; Hassan Jallow, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; Robert Petit, Co-Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; and Stephen Rapp, Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone since 2006, and now, as we've posted, President Barack Obama's nominee to become the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues.
For details, contact Carol Drake at cdrake@roberthjackson.org.

Go On! Crimes against humanity experts meet

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Dozens of international criminal law experts will gather in St. Louis, Missouri, next week for a meeting on the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative about which we posted a while back. Spearheading the 2-year project aimed at drafting a multilateral treaty codifying the proscription against crimes against humanity is our colleague Leila Nadya Sadat, Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law and Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, which is sponsoring the experts' meeting along with the American Branch of the International Law Association and the American Society of International Law.
As is detailed in the agenda, crimes-against-humanity topics that will be examined include:
► Legal, social, and historical context;
► Legal issues;
► New conceptual paradigms; and
► Enforcement issues.
Participants include Sadat, of course, as well as the following IntLawGrrls and IntLawGrrl guests/alumnae: yours truly, Kelly Askin, Valerie Oosterveld, Diane Orentlicher, and Naomi Roht-Arriaza. Among the many other experts taking part in the closed roundtable discussion include: M. Cherif Bassiouni, chief drafter of the draft treaty; former international prosecutors Richard Goldstone (ICTY), David Crane (Special Court for Sierra Leone), and Whitney R. Harris (Nuremberg); Clint Williamson and David Scheffer, current and former U.S. Ambassadors at Large for War Crimes Issues; ASIL Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen; and Africa Legal Aid Executive Director Evelyn Ankumah. The complete list is here.

On this day

On April 8, ...
... 1971, the 1st international meeting of representatives of the Roma people (flag at right) was held near London. Since 1990 the date's thus been observed as International Roma Day in order to raise awareness of the needs of this people, whom the European Roma Rights Centre describes as "the most deprived ethnic group of Europe." Among the areas in which Roma suffer discrimination in various states of Europe is education -- an issue addressed, as IntLawGrrl Diane Orentlicher posted, in a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights. Other areas of concern are jobs, health care, social services, and housing, according to the Centre.
... 1899, 44-year-old Martha M. Place became the 1st woman to be executed in the electric chair, in New York's Sing Sing Prison (left). Said to have been "mentally unstable" since childhood, Place had been convicted of murdering her stepdaughter; then-Gov. Theodore Roosevelt rejected bids to pardon her.

On February 8, ...

... 1983 (15 years ago today), the Defence Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, was forced to quit after an Israeli tribunal found Sharon at fault for failing in 1982 to prevent the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia from massacring more than 800 refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps near Beirut. Years later, plaintiffs invoked Belgium's universal jurisdiction law in an effort to call Sharon, by then Israel's Prime Minister, further to account. This invocation and others led to Belgium's gutting of the statute. Among those who've written about this are IntLawGrrl Diane F. Orentlicher, in Whose Justice? Reconciling Universal Jurisdiction with Democratic Principles, 92 Georgetown Law Journal 1057 (2004), and, in 2003, our colleagues Steven R. Ratner, Belgium’s War Crimes Statute: A Postmortem, 97 American Journal of International Law 888, and Malvina Halberstam, Belgium’s Universal Jurisdiction Law: Vindication of International Justice or Pursuit of Politics?, 25 Cardozo Law Review 247. Sharon's been in a coma since a 2006 stroke.
... 2008 (today), is celebrated the Buddhist festival of Nirvana Day, marking the death of Buddha (right) at age 80. On this day,

Buddhists think about their lives and how they can work towards gaining the perfect peace of Nirvana. Nirvana is believed to be the end of rebirth and is the ultimate aim of Buddhism. It is reached when all want and suffering is gone.

A New Genocide Statute: Above & Beyond

Genocide is a modern word for an ancient crime. The term “genocide” was originally coined by Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin (right), who, after learning of the Armenian massacre of World War I, campaigned tirelessly for the drafting of a multilateral treaty prohibiting the crime. Despite his efforts, it took the events of World War II to compel the international community to finally bring Lemkin’s project to fruition. The Charters of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals did not include genocide as an enumerated crime; instead, they provided for the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace. However, the Nuremberg indictment did charge the Nazi defendants with committing genocide, which it defined as

the extermination of racial and national groups … in certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people, and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies.

Further, the Judgment clearly addressed acts that would amount to genocide under the contemporary definition of the crime.

Following that Nuremberg Judgment in 1946, the United Nations General Assembly (below right) took up the matter of genocide and passed a Resolution (96(I)) confirming that genocide constitutes a crime under international law, the punishment of which is a matter of international concern. The unanimous Resolution also recommended that the United Nations draw up a draft convention on genocide to be submitted to the full General Assembly for signature and ratification. The Secretary-General began work on a draft Convention in 1947. This draft was passed to an ad hoc Committee of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and then to the United Nations General Assembly, which adopted the Convention on December 9, 1948. The Convention entered into force in January 1951 and, to date, it has been ratified by 133 States.

Throughout this drafting process, the provisions concerning the element of intent (mens rea), the enumerated protected groups, the inclusion of cultural genocide, and application of universal jurisdiction received the most intense debate. With respect to the latter feature, unlike other international criminal law (ICL) treaties, the Genocide Convention does not obligate state parties to exercise universal jurisdiction over acts of genocide. Instead, the treaty obligates state parties to assert jurisdiction over genocide committed on their territories pursuant to the classic territorial principle. The Convention also contemplates the existence of a permanent international tribunal, which was a mere twinkle in the eye of internationalists at the time the Genocide Convention was drafted. Specifically, the Genocide Convention at Article VI provides that:

Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III [conspiracy, incitement, attempt, or complicity to commit genocide] shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.

Notwithstanding the treaty's more limited jurisdictional regime, it is widely accepted that genocide is also subject to universal jurisdiction as a matter of permissive CIL, exemplified by the prosecution of Adolph Eichmann by Israel (right).

The United States signed the Genocide Convention on December 11, 1948, but did not ratify it until October 14, 1988. Although initially supportive of the treaty, the United States experienced a resurgence during the Cold War years of ideas that viewed international treaties as threats to American sovereignty. The American Bar Association (ABA) was one of the most outspoken opponents of ratification, arguing that human rights issues were “essentially a domestic matter” and were therefore not “properly the subject of negotiations with a foreign country.” Additionally, the ABA believed that ratification of the treaty would threaten the federal nature of the United States by establishing a crime of genocide under federal law, which, it argued, would undercut a traditional domain of state law.

After years of failed attempts to urge the Senate to ratify the treaty, the NGO community that comprised the umbrella Ad Hoc Committee on Human Rights and Genocide Treaties began to make progress. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan (left) became a champion of the cause, urging “early Senate action on genocide in order to assist [the United States’] efforts to expand human freedom and fight human rights abuses around the world.” By the time the treaty was finally ratified in 1988, Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) (below left), a major proponent of ratification and for whom the treaty legislation was named, had delivered over three thousand speeches on the Senate floor concerning the genocide treaty—one a day for nineteen years. As he signed the implementing legislation into law on November 4, 1988, President Reagan acknowledged the historical importance of the United States’ accession to the Genocide Convention when he said he was “delighted to fulfill the promise made by Harry Truman to all the people of the world—and especially the Jewish people.” (For this history, see William Korey's 1997 article, The United States and the Genocide Convention: Leading Advocate and Leading Obstacle.

Congress originally codified the prohibition against genocide in U.S. statutory law at 18 U.S.C. § 1091, which states that the crime of genocide has been committed when a person, “whether in time of peace or in time of war” and

with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such—

(1) kills members of that group;
(2) causes serious bodily injury to members of that group;
(3) causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques;
(4) subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical
destruction of the group in whole or in part;
(5) imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or
(6) transfers by force children of the group to another group.…

The statute originally applied only to acts of genocide that occurred within the United States or to acts that were perpetrated by a U.S. national (pursuant to both the territorial and nationality principles of adjudicative jurisdiction). In December 2007, Congress, having earlier in the year heard testimony from, among others, IntLawGrrl Diane Orentlicher, expanded the statute. (Diane's October 2007 testimony to a House of Representatives subcommittee is here; she'd testified before a Senate subcommittee 'way back in February 2007. Our Opinio Juris colleague Kevin Jon Heller posted on this development here.)

By dint of the so-called Genocide Accountability Act of 2007, the proscription now covers situations in which the perpetrator

► is a permanent resident alien in the United States,

► is a stateless person, or

►is found, or brought into, the United States, even if the act occurs outside the United States.

This more fully implements the principle of universal jurisdiction. Perhaps ironically, Republican administrations have made the biggest strides in domesticating the international prohibition against genocide in U.S. law through ratification of the treaty and the enactment and then expansion of the domestic implementing legislation.

The United States has historically been reticent to utilize the principle of universal jurisdiction with respect to human rights crimes rather than terrorism, even with the statutory authorization (and arguably treaty obligation) to do so. The case against Liberian Chuckie Taylor presents a first effort, as earlier blogged here and here. It remains to be seen whether this amendment will make any difference in actual practice.

Europe's Brown v. Board of Education

It would be hard to exaggerate the level of racism experienced by Roma (widely known as “gypsies,” a word many Roma abhor) in virtually every facet of daily life. Hostility toward Roma runs so wide and deep that it is peculiarly difficult to dismantle: Governments that have an otherwise strong commitment to human rights all too often act on the belief that Roma have earned the stereotypes that are enforced to their detriment.
Thus it is all the more noteworthy that discrimination against Roma in the Czech Republic provided the occasion for this week’s historic judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In the Case of D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic the Court’s Grand Chamber ruled on November 13, 2007, that Czech Roma have suffered unlawful discrimination in relation to education, a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocol No. 1. (Proud disclosure: My colleagues at the Open Society Justice Initiative, James Goldston and Anthony Lester, were lead attorneys in the case.)
The decision marked a watershed in anti-discrimination law in Europe. For the first time, the ECHR found that a pattern of racial discrimination in primary education, in this case resulting in an especially pernicious form of segregation, violated the anti-discrimination provision of the European Convention.
Like many countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic has diverted an astonishingly large percentage of Romani children to "special schools"—schools for children with mental disabilities. The applicants in D.H. v. Czech Republic came from the Czech town of Ostrava, where at the time of one survey Romani children represented only 2.26% of pupils in primary school—yet constituted 56% of pupils placed in special schools. Every way you come at the numbers, they tell a devastating story. Here’s another cut: More than half of Ostrava’s Romani children were assigned to special schools, compared to 1.8% of non-Romani students. And another: Romani children in Ostrava were at the time of one study 27 times more likely to be shunted off to special schools than non-Roma. (photo of Ostrova family courtesy of New York Times)
The facts that gave rise to this week’s ruling should, proverbially, speak for themselves. Yet they were not enough to persuade a seven-judge Chamber of the ECHR, which had rendered judgment against the applicants in the same case in February 2006.
The Grand Chamber, in contrast, saw the problem and, along the way, brought European Convention law in line with the more protective anti-discrimination standards enforced by the European Union. Among other notables, this week’s decision affirmed in clarion terms that indirect discrimination—discrimination resulting from a harmful and disproportinate impact on a particular group despite the apparently neutral terms of a policy—is prohibited by the European human rights convention. And, the Grand Chamber affirmed, it isn’t necessary to prove discriminatory intent on the part of government authorities to find that an official policy produces unlawful indirect discrimination.
Recognizing how hard it can be to prove discrimination that is camouflaged by seemingly neutral rules, the Grand Chamber helpfully clarified what it takes to make a case: Although statistical data are not a necessary form of proof, “statistics which appear on critical examination to be reliable and significant will be sufficient to constitute . . . prima facie evidence” of indirect discrimination.
Implementing this week’s ruling will surely be as daunting as the eight-year legal odyssey that culminated in the ECHR’s breakthrough judgment. As the Grand Chamber recognized, the Czech Republic is hardly alone in its practices, and the discrimination against Roma that pervades the societies in which they live is so ingrained it can be hard even to see. (So perhaps it is not surprising that the lawyers who mounted the Czech government’s defense in Strasbourg tried to defend Ostrava’s segregated education by blaming Romani parents.) Now, though, Roma have the powerful shield of European human rights law on their side.

Brother No. 3, Not Our Sister arrested together

They are hardly the first couple to commit incomprehensible crimes in synchrony—Diane Marie Amann’s remarkable IntLawGrrls series on women at Nuremberg described the postwar trial of Ilse Koch, “wife of the Buchenwald Camp commander [Karl Otto Koch] who was complicit in the atrocities committed under his command.” But on November 12, 2007, Khmer Rouge couple Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith (above) became the first husband and wife to face charges together before a contemporary Nuremberg-type tribunal, this one in Cambodia, confirming speculation about the couple’s arrest reported in IntLawGrrls last July by Beth Van Schaack. (The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established another grim first by indicting a mother and son for their respective roles in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.)
The Cambodian couple were charged with crimes against humanity (Ieng Sary was also charged with war crimes) and were detained under the authority of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (logo below), a court that, as Jaya Ramji-Nogales and other IntLawGrrls have posted, was established by the United Nations and the Government of Cambodia to try surviving senior leaders and others who were most responsible for Khmer Rouge-era atrocities. Their arrest this week doubled the number of suspects detained by the ECCC.
Ieng Sary, known as “Brother Number 3” during the Khmer Rouge era, served as Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in the regime of the infamous “Brother Number 1”—Pol Pot, who died in 1998. (“Brother Number 2,” Nuon Chea, has already been detained by the ECCC.) Ieng Thirith (“Not Our Sister”) served as Minister of Social Affairs and Education during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Her sister, Khieu Ponnary, was married to Pol Pot.
How individuals come to commit crimes so horrific they transcend our capacity to comprehend is a perennial mystery, and the enigma of wholesale evil is somehow compounded when the alleged perpetrators are married to each other.
To meet Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith is to deepen the mystery. Twenty-three years ago this month, I spent a surrealistic weekend interviewing the two, along with noted constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams, at the Khmer Rouge’s guerrilla headquarters in the Cambodian jungle. They were charming hosts: We asked about genocide, they offered us shrimp and champagne. In response to our persistent questions about Khmer Rouge atrocities, Ieng Sary finally acknowledged that the Khmer Rouge “owe the world an accounting” for the “unfortunate events of the 1970s.” But, Ieng Sary explained, with the Khmer Rouge still at war with the Cambodian government, they were rather busy. The accounting would have to wait. At long last, the wait may be over.

On July 5, ...

... 1996, Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She gave birth naturally to 4 lambs before she contracted arthritis and was euthanized in 2003.
... 1946, 4 days after the United States began testing atomic weapons in the Bikini Atoll, Louis Reard introduced in Paris a skimpy 2-piece swimsuit he named le bikini. In his Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, U.S. Prosecutor Telford Taylor made a particular mention of his 1st sight of the new item of couture -- noteworthy given the ongoing search by IntLawGrrl Diane Orentlicher [aka Beatrice] for the women lawyers who contributed to those trials.
... 1937, U.S. Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) was born in New York City.