In December 2016 the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program conducted a Colloquium ‘Transitional Justice: International, Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ chaired by Prof. Ruti Teitel, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School.
Since 2012 the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program is holding two Colloquia of Transitional Justice each year. (you can read of past Colloquia conducted at the Minerva Center Transitional Justice Program here)
The Colloquium in December 2016 dealt with international, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives of Transitional Justice. More than twenty years into the development of the field there is significant experience on the theorization of transitional justice as well as of its purposes, relevant actors, processes and mechanisms.
The main speaker of the Colloquium was Sir Geoffrey Robertson, QC, who was invited to speak about Genocide Denial: The Armenians Case.
Geoffrey Robertson QC has had a distinguished career as a trial counsel, human rights advocate and United Nations judge. He has appeared in many celebrated Old Bailey trials, acted for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in cases brought against journalists in British Commonwealth countries, argued many death sentence appeals at the Privy Council, defended Salman Rushdie, Mike Tyson, N.W.A and Julian Assange, prosecuted Hastings Banda and represented Human Rights Watch in the proceedings against General Pinochet. He served as first president of the UN war crimes court in Sierra Leone and as a ‘distinguished jurist’ member of the UN’s Internal Justice Council (2008-12). He has authored landmark decisions on the limits of amnesties, the illegality of recruiting child soldiers and the legal protections for war correspondents and human rights monitors. In 2011 he was awarded the New York Bar Association prize for Achievement in International Law and Affairs.
