Richard Goldstone

Richard J. Goldstone at Beloit College

Richard J. Goldstone (born October 26, 1938) is a former South African Constitutional Court judge. He served as the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996, and in 2009 led an independent fact-finding mission created by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War.

Family life and religious background

Richard Goldstone is a Jewish South African, who is married to Noleen Goldstone. They have two daughters (Glenda and Nicole) and four grandsons (Jason, Sean, Ben and Jordan). According to his daughter Nicole, Goldstone "is a Zionist and loves Israel." Goldstone himself, in a 2000 speech in Jerusalem, noted that "bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust".

Law

South Africa

Goldstone graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA LLB cum laude in 1962. He then practised as an Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar. In 1976 he was appointed Senior Counsel and in 1980 was made Judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court.

In the latter years of Apartheid in South Africa, Goldstone served as chairperson of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, later known as the Goldstone Commission. The Commission played a critical role in uncovering and publicizing allegations of grave wrongdoing by the Apartheid-era South African security forces and bringing home to white South Africans the extensive violence that was being done in their name. The Commission concluded that most of the violence of those years was being orchestrated by shadowy figures within the Apartheid regime, often through the use of a so-called "third force." The Commission thus provided a first road map for the investigations into security force wrongdoing that, after democratization, were taken up by the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His work was criticized for refusing to investigate the African National Congress’ armed wing.

Goldstone also served as a judge on South Africa's Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 until he was appointed judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in 1989. As a judge, Goldstone enforced the draconian "emergency laws" of the Apartheid regime.

After South Africa's first democratic election in April 1994, Goldstone served as a judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, from July 1994 to October 2003,. The Court was entrusted with the task of interpreting the new South African Constitution and supervising the country’s transition into democracy. His service there was criticized for taking the government’s side in the incident where allegedly millions of voters (mainly from minorities supporting the opposition) were excluded from the franchise by a technical change in ID documents.

He also served as national president of the National Institute of Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO); chairperson of the Bradlow Foundation, a charitable educational trust; and head of the board of the Human Rights Institute of South Africa (HURISA).

Chief UN Prosecutor in Yugoslavia and Rwanda

In August 1994, Goldstone was named as the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by a resolution of the UN Security Council in 1993. When the Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in late 1994, he became its chief prosecutor, too. In those roles he had to design prosecutorial strategies for both those ground-breaking tribunals, from scratch. In doing so, he sought to be scrupulously even-handed—a goal he was more easily able to achieve at ICTY than at ICTR. He built his strategy at both courts to a large degree on that pursued by the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-46. He served as the chief prosecutor of the two tribunals until September 1996. R.W. Johnson, a South African journalist and historian, criticized his work at the ICTY.

Argentina

He was a member of the International Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina (CEANA) which was established in 1997 to identify Nazi war criminals who had emigrated to Argentina, and transferred victim assets (Nazi gold) there.

Kosovo

Goldstone was chairperson of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo from August 1999 until December 2001.

Member of Volcker Committee

In April 2004, he was appointed by Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to the Independent Inquiry Committee, chaired by Paul Volcker, to investigate the Iraq Oil for Food program.

United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the 2009 Gaza Conflict

Main article: United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

Goldstone headed a fact finding mission "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.” The mission originated in the resolution by United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on January 12 2009..

Judge Goldstone, together with colonel Travis and Hina Jilani, signed an open letter, published 16 March 2009, addressed to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Security Council Ambassadors, expressing "shock" over the events in Gaza and asking to hold those who perpetrated "gross violations of the laws of war" and "targeting of civilians" to account. The chief rabbi of South Africa lawyer Dr. Warren Goldstein noted that these statements, made before the work of the mission has begun, violated provisions for impartiality of the fact-finding missions.

On April 3, 2009, Goldstone was named as the head of the mission. He responded to the announcement that he was "shocked, as a Jew", to be invited to head the mission. Goldstone wrote that he accepted the mandate for the mission "because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) applauded the selection of Goldstone to head the mission, saying that "Justice Goldstone's reputation for fairness and integrity is unmatched, and his investigation provides the best opportunity to address alleged violations by both Hamas and Israel". According to UNHRC's mission page, at the time of the appointment to head the committee Goldstone was a board member of HRW. Professor Gerald Steinberg of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor and journalist Melanie Phillips said that even though Goldstone resigned from HRW after the inquiry began, his impartiality was compromised by his link to the organization that accused Israel of war crimes in several reports issued during the course of the mission.

In a July 16 interview, Judge Goldstone said "at first I was not prepared to accept the invitation to head the mission". "It was essential," he continued, to expand the mandate to include "the sustained rocket attack on civilians in southern Israel, as well as other facts." He set this expansion of the mandate as a condition for chairing the mission. The next day, he wrote in the New York Times, "I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups." The UNHRC press release announcing his nomination documents the changed mandate of the mission. However, UN Watch and Professor Irwin Cotler note that despite the promise of the UNHRC president to Judge Goldstone to alter the mandate of the committee to examine conduct of both sides of the conflict, the mission's finding resolution was not formally superseded by UNHRC at its June session and the council's president does not possess the powers to legislate them on his own.

On October 16 2009, UN Human Rights Council voted in support of the Goldstone Report where twenty-five of the 47 member nations voted in favour of the resolution endorsing the report. Goldstone has criticized the United Nations Human Rights Council's selective endorsement of the report his commission compiled, since the resolution adopted chastises Israel only, when the report itself is critical of both parties.

A South African journalist and historian R.W. Johnson criticized Judge Goldstone's proceedings in regard with the mission. The criticism included accepting a commission subjected to UN Human Rights Council that is biased against Israel and writing a report based largely on interviews with Hamas members.

Letty Pogrebin wrote in favour of the Goldstone report and criticised the vilification of Richard Golstone by what she calls the "Jews in the Israel-right-or-wrong mafia".

Other activities

From 2004 through 2008, in addition to his teaching appointments, Goldstone was the chair of the Advisory Committee to the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation, an initiative of the Salzburg Global Seminar. In 2008, the Institute became an independent entity, with Goldstone as its chairman. He also continues as a member of the board of directors of the Salzburg Global Seminar.

Goldstone serves on the Board of Directors of several nonprofit organizations that promote justice, including Physicians for Human Rights, the International Center for Transitional Justice, the South African Legal Services Foundation, the Brandeis University Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Economic and Social Rights. He is a trustee of Hebrew University Goldstone was president of the Jewish training and education charity World ORT between 1997 and 2004.

Goldstone serves as a trustee for Link-SA, a charity which funds the tertiary education of South Africans from impoverished backgrounds

Goldstone participated as guest faculty in the Oxford-George Washington International Human Rights Program in 2005.

Goldstone was a Global Visiting Professor of Law at New York University School of Law in spring 2004, and in the fall, he was the William Hughes Mulligan Visiting Professor at Fordham Law School. In spring 2005, he was the Henry Shattuck Visiting Professor Law at Harvard Law School.

Goldstone is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Scholar in Political Science at Washington & Jefferson College.

Justice Richard J. Goldstone was named the 2007 Weissberg Distinguished Professor of International Studies at Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisconsin. From January 17–28, 2007 he visited classes, worked with faculty and students, participated in panel discussions on human rights and transitional justice with leading figures in the field and delivered the annual Weissberg Lecture, "South Africa's Transition to Democracy: The Role of the Constitutional Court" on January 24 at the Moore Lounge in Pearsons Hall.

Justice Goldstone taught at Harvard University in the Spring 2007 semester. In Fall 2007 he was the William Hughes Mulligan Professor of International Law at Fordham University School of Law, and holds that position again in Fall 2009. Fordham Law presented him with a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, in 2007, the highest honor the school can bestow.

Awards and honors

Justice Goldstone has received many prominent awards, including the MacArthur Award for International Justice, announced by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in October 2008, and bestowed in the The Hague in May, 2009. In 1994, Goldstone received the International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association and in 2005 he received the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights. He holds honorary degrees from Hebrew University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Maryland, and the Universities of Cape Town, British Columbia, Glasgow, and Calgary among others. He was the first person to be granted the title, The Hague Peace Philosopher in 2009, as part of the new Spinoza Fellowship, a program run by the city of The Hague, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Radio Netherlands, and the Hague Campus of the University of Leiden. He is an honorary fellow of St Johns College, Cambridge, an honorary member of the Association of the Bar of New York, a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Center for International Affairs of Harvard University.

In October 2003, Goldstone gave a lecture entitled "Preventing Deadly Conflict" at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Distinguished Lecture Series. In April 2005, Goldstone spoke on “The Future of International Criminal Justice,” at the Fletcher School (Tufts University) in Massachusetts.

Publications

Books by Richard Goldstone

• International judicial institutions : the architecture of international justice at home and abroad, co-authored with Adam M. Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. ISBN: 9780415776455, 0415776457 (hardback); 9780415776462, 0415776465 (pbk.)
• For humanity: reflections of a war crimes investigator. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, c2000. ISBN 0300082053
• Do judges speak out?. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1993. ISBN 0869824317

Contributions to edited volumes, and prefaces/forewords to books by others

• "From the Holocaust: Some legal and moral implications", chapter in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.

Goldstone has written forewords to several books, including Martha Minow, Beyond Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence and War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg, which examines the political and legal influence the Nuremberg trials have had over contemporary war crime proceedings. More recently, he has written about the challenge to individual human rights posed by counter-terror measures in R. A. Wilson, ed., "Human Rights in the 'War on Terror'".

External links

• Interview One-on-One with Judge Goldstone @ Leadel.NET
• Law and the search for justice: Conversation with Justice Goldstone
• TIME magazine: The Cape Crusader: South African wants a permanent international court to try war criminals
• Profile of Justice Richard J. Goldstone