Richard Goldstone

Richard J. Goldstone at Beloit College

Richard J. Goldstone (born October 26, 1938) is a former South African judge. He served on the Transvaal Supreme Court and Appellate Division of the Supreme Court under the Apartheid regime. After the dismantling of Apartheid he served on the Constitutional Court . He also 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 and four grandsons.

Law

South Africa

Goldstone was educated at King Edward VII School (KES) and 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.

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 by the Apartheid government, Goldstone enforced the draconian "emergency laws" of the Apartheid regime.

Criticism

A report carried by Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot made accusations that during his role as judge during the State of Emergency in 1980s, Richard Goldstone sentenced 28 black men to death and 4 black men to receive lashings. The report also alleged that Goldstone sentenced these men to death after they appealed their conviction of murder.

Goldstone vigorously denied these accusations, saying that he had sentenced two people to death during his time as a judge 25-30 years ago for gratuitous murders committed during armed robberies. He stated that the other accusations in the Yediot article were false or distorted. Goldstone also stated to the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz that his "..approach was that it was better to fight from inside than not at all. The moral dilemma came up when I had to apply the law", adding that he has "..always been against the death penalty. But when I accepted the position to the bench I had to honor the oath of office.." and that he "upheld a majority of appeals in the Supreme Court, as one of three judges on a panel".

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has compared Goldstone's judicial role in apartheid South Africa to that of Nazi war criminals. "Goldstone took a job as an apartheid judge. He allowed dozens of black people who were unfairly tried to be executed," Dershowitz told to Israeli Channel 2 TV. "You know, a lot of people say we just followed the law, German judges… That's what Mengele said too. That was Mengele's defense and that was what everybody said in Nazi Germany. 'We just followed the law.' When you are in an apartheid country like South Africa, you don't follow the law" Dershowitz added.

Former head of Department of Justice criminal division Office of Special Investigations Neal Sher has accused Goldstone of being "instrumental in effectuating and legitimizing a regime universally known for its widespread human rights abuses." Sher claims recently disclosed information regarding Goldstone’s apartheid-era rulings raises questions about whether he is eligible to enter the United States. According to Sher, "individuals who admit to acts that constitute a crime of moral turpitude¨are ineligible to enter the US." He believes Goldstone's admission could potentially "fit within" the provisions that would prevent Goldstone from entering the US.

Support

Other sources, including many South Africans who opposed apartheid, dispute this characterization of Goldstone's record. In January 2010, two members of Nelson Mandela's defense team in the Rivonia trial , George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson, wrote in the Mail and Guardian that Goldstone's decision

in the case of S v Govender in 1986 that no ejectment order should be made against persons disqualified by the Group Areas Act from occupying premises reserved for the white group, without enquiring into whether alternative accommodation for such persons was available, was a blow to the apartheid regime and contributed substantially to that legislation becoming unenforceable in parts of the country....

Former president FW de Klerk, with the concurrence of the then-president of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela, appointed Goldstone as the chairperson of the commission to investigate what became known as hit-squads or third-force organisations within the army and the police.

His reports exposed high-ranking officers, who were obliged by De Klerk to resign, and other ­members of the security forces, and he made findings that police had unlawfully shot at unarmed protesters and recommended that they be charged with murder.

Threats to his life were made, and his name was on the hit list produced in court as part of the state case against the killers of Chris Hani in 1993.

In a 1999 interview Geoffrey Budlender, former director of the anti-apartheid Legal Resources Centre, stated of Goldstone's decision in the Govender case that "it was an alert judge trying to apply human rights standards to a repressive piece of legislation. And it was Goldstone's work; it wasn't our work that stopped the Group Areas prosecutions in the end." Budlender noted that "it was a matter of great debate in the eighties about whether decent people should accept appointments to the bench, because they were enforcing repressive laws," but stated that "[f]rom the point of view of the practitioner trying to run human rights cases and public-interest cases, we prayed for a Goldstone or a [John] Didcott on the bench. That was our dream."

Sasha Polakow-Suransky (writing in the Huffington Post and the "Middle East Channel") accused Goldstone's critics of hypocrisy (pointing out Israel's close relationship with the South African apartheid regime, including extensive arms sales) and noted that Goldstone had earned the respect of Nelson Mandela, who appointed him in 1994 to the South African Constitutional Court.

From 1991 to 1994 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 much 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."

Specifically, on March 18, 2004, the Commission reported that South Africa's second highest-ranking police official, deputy commissioner Lt. Gen. Basie Smit, and the police officers in charge of the central investigations and counterintelligence divisions had engaged in "a horrible network of criminal activity," in which they "secretly funneled weapons to the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party and helped train black hit squads involved in political violence and terrorism". 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. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report extensively cites the Goldstone Commission's findings.

Goldstone 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.

The South African journalist and historian R.W. Johnson wrote in an October, 2009 piece that Goldstone had made serious ethical breaches in his capacity as chief prosecutor for the ICTY. Johnson argued that Goldstone was informed by higher-ups that if he did not secure an indictment by November, 1994, he would not receive budgetary funding for the following year. Goldstone quickly moved to indict the only person there was evidence against, even though Goldstone admitted that the defendant "wasn't an inappropriate first person to indict." Johnson, in his piece, "Who Is Richard Goldstone," noted that the indictment "was so inappropriate that the judges in The Hague passed a motion severely censuring Goldstone."

Noam Chomsky criticized Goldstone for his ruling on NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. Chomsky has attacked Goldstones characterization of the bombing as "illegal but legitimate." Chomsky argues if Goldstone claims the bombings were illegal, then it must be a war crime.

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..

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 argued 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.

On October 16, 2009, UN Human Rights Council voted in support of the Goldstone Report where twenty-five member nations voted in favour of the resolution endorsing the report, six voted against endorsement while another eleven remained impartial. 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.

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. 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.

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 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
• The NS Interview: Richard Goldstone