The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights

10. Representing the Bench and Bar

Chapter 10 Representing the Bench and Bar Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law. Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. Article 11. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. -Universal Declaration of Human Rights Lawyers are alternately honored and reviled. In Boston and Bangkok critics detest attorneys' high fees and high living. The bar seems to produce scores of ambulance chasers for each civil liberties hero. Comedians have entire routines of cuttingjokes about lawyers' greed, opportunism , bribery, dishonesty, and political connections. "Question: What would you call forty lawyers at the bottom of Lake Geneva? Answer: A good start!" Curmudgeons on the bench defy majority rule, defend privilege, and resist social change. Wags in Chicago claim it is more important to know the judge than to know the law. Yet Chicago attorney Clarence Darrow courageously defended the underdog . u.s.Supreme Court judges appointed by Richard Nixon independently decided a case that doomed his presidency. Brave jurists in Colombia and the Philippines give their lives for human rights. Politics has threatened judicial independence without respect for ideology. Communist judges functioned as lackeys of the party. Is- Representing the Bench and Bar 219 lamic governments favored religious justice in Shari'a courts. Leftist third world leaders painted the bar as a privileged elite beholden to Western interests. Right-wing dictators treated all who challenged their authority as Marxist traitors. Tyrants of varied persuasions abolished the regular courts, prosecuted civilians without counsel before military tribunals, and imprisoned or disbarred outspoken defense lawyers. Drug dealers, large landowners, and terrorists assassinated judges who threatened their interests. Democratically elected executives manipulated judicial appointments, transfers, assignments, promotions , and retirement for political advantage. Canadian lawyer John Humphrey drafted provisions for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that endorsed trial before an independent, impartial, competent tribunal with all the necessary guarantees for defense. Those guarantees were not proclaimed to establish a legal elite. Without immunity from political interference, jurists cannot protect fundamental rights. With unchecked power, they become corrupt. When the human rights movement came of age in the 1970s, third world activists became an endangered species. Western lawyers organized to protect defense lawyers tortured as terrorists and judges assassinated for their independence. In 1975 the ABA created a new committee, an inactive New York Bar committee revived , and New York attorneys created the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR). The ICJ acted after a fact-finding mission to Argentina identified twenty-six lawyers subjected to death threats. In 1977 Executive Committee chairman William Butler obtained a Rockefeller Brothers Foundation grant to start an American IC] Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (CIJL). The Executive Committee and members attending a Commission meeting endorsed the Centre and a protection strategy. The CIJL would collect information about harassment that could move lawyers' organizations to aid colleagues in distress. IC] Secretary-General Niall MacDermot persuaded Butler to make the CI]L part of the Geneva Secretariat; its first director joined the staff in 1978. The start-up grant ended after two years, and attorneys never contributed enough to pay the director's salary. The Centre relied on government and foundation grants rather than membership recruitment and affiliate development. A French judge on the CIJL Advisory Board resigned because his recommendations for government grants to the ICJ might have created a conflict of interest. The Ford Foundation supported publication of a CIJL Bulletin in three languages that reached two thousand subscribers in 127 countries. As ICJ Secretary-General, MacDermot ran the CIJL through a young 220 Chapter 10 lawyer employed as director. ICJ legal officers assisted with projects in their regions. The first two directors, John Woodhouse of New Zealand and Dan O'Donnell from the United States, each served two years. Americans Ustinia Dolgopol and Reed Brody each directed the Centre for more than four years. Table 10.1 identifies the directors and advisory board members. TABLE 10.1. CIJL Directors and Advisory Board, 1978-1992. CIJL Directors John...