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Confronting Complexity in the Hague

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2012 ASIL Annual Meeting: Confronting Complexity

American Society of International Law

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Partner:: American Society of International Law
Location:: The Fairmount Hotel
Washington, DC
Event Date:: 03.29.12
Speakers:: Brooks Daly,; Theodor Meron,; Sang-Hyun Song,; Peter Tomka,; Jozias van Aartsen,; Willem van Genugten
Tags:: 1899 peace conference; permanent court of arbitration; international court of justice

Summary: Confronting Complexity in the Hague: No city in the world evokes the peaceful resolution of international disputes like The Hague in The Netherlands. Since it hosted the 1899 Peace Conference which created the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague has become synonymous with international courts and tribunals. The International Court of Justice, the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as well as the appeal chambers for the International Criminal Court for Rwanda are all headquartered in the Dutch city. More recently, the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon were added to the distinguished group. What does it mean for these institutions to sit in the same location? Does this facilitate dialogue? What are the advantages and disadvantages to centralizing these functions in a single location removed from the actual conflicts? Are there consequences for the development of international law that result from this proximity? Should there be? Should official or unofficial communications and discussion across courts, those who work for them, and those who appear before them be encouraged or discouraged? Would the establishment of seminars or study groups on specific legal topics of interest be beneficial to the work of these institutions? This Panel, whose members include Presidents of several judicial bodies sitting in The Hague, will address these and related issues to reflect on the role of The Hague as the judicial capital of the world.

Which problems is international law particularly well-suited to solve? Which seem to defy its regulation? What tools does international law have to manage this complexity? Where are best practices emerging? What has our profession learned in the last half-century? Is law, with its emphasis on rules and stability, conceptually and functionally capable of responding to the challenges of complexity? If not, how should law react? What do experts from outside the legal profession, from technology, finance, counterinsurgency, climate science, and risk, believe law can add? During the 2012 ASIL Annual Meeting we will address these questions and discuss how international law responds to complexity."

Bio

Brooks Daly

As Deputy Secretary-General at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), Mr. Daly has primary responsibility for the legal affairs of an intergovernmental organization with 111 member states devoted to the peaceful settlement of international disputes through arbitration. His responsibilities include advising lawyers and arbitrators participating in international arbitration under PCA auspices on a variety of matters relating to arbitral procedure and international dispute resolution generally. He also assists the PCA Secretary-General when he is called upon to designate or act directly as appointing authority under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules.

He speaks frequently on international arbitration topics and lectures at Leiden University School of Law. Prior to joining the PCA, Mr. Daly acted as Counsel at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration in Paris, France. He is a member of the California Bar and practiced with the firms of Latham & Watkins (Los Angeles) and Hale & Dorr (London) before joining the ICC.

Theodor Meron

Theodor Meron was the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until 2005, and now serves as a judge on the Appeals Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the ICTY.

Born in Kalisz, Poland, Judge Meron received his legal education at the Hebrew University (M.J.), Harvard Law School (LL.M., J.S.D.) and Cambridge University (Diploma in Public International Law). Since 1977, he has been a Professor of International Law and, since 1994, the holder of the Charles L. Denison Chair at New York University School of Law. In 2000-2001, he served as Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State.

Sang-Hyun Song

Song Sang-Hyun is a South Korean lawyer, and the President of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Judge Song has extensive practical and academic experience in the areas of court management, civil and criminal procedure, and the law of evidence. For more than thirty years, he taught as a professor of law at Seoul National University Law School, beginning in 1972. He has also held visiting professorships at a number of law schools, including Harvard, New York University, Melbourne and Wellington. Judge Song started his legal career as a judge-advocate in the Korean army and later as a foreign attorney in a New York law firm. He has served as a member of the advisory committee to the Korean Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice. As such, he led initiatives to reform the national litigation system and the criminal justice system, particularly the reform of the Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Court Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the prison system. Judge Song has vast experience in relevant areas of international law, principally international humanitarian law and human rights law. He is co-founder of the Legal Aid Centre for Women, and of the Childhood Leukaemia Foundation in Seoul, and the President of UNICEF/KOREA. Judge Song is also the respected author of several publications on relevant legal issues, and the recipient of the highest decoration of the Korean Government (MUNGUNGHWA, 2011).

Peter Tomka

Peter Tomka is a Slovak diplomat and has served as a Judge on the International Court of Justice since 2003.

Jozias van Aartsen

Jozias Johannes van Aartsen is the Mayor of The Hague. In this capacity, he chairs the Municipal Council and the Municipal Executive (college van burgemeester en wethouders). The mayor of The Hague is responsible for the portfolio of public order and safety. Mayors in the Netherlands are not elected but are appointed by the Queen.

Van Aartsen was born on 25 December 1947 in The Hague. He studied law at the Vrije Universiteit and was the personal secretary of the VVD (Dutch Liberal Party) party faction leader in the Dutch Lower House of Parliament (Tweede Kamer) from 1971 to 1974. Thereafter he became director of the Telders Foundation, the scholarly think-tank of the VVD.

In 1979 he joined the Ministry of the Interior as Chef de Bureau of the Secretary General. From 1983 to 1985 he was Deputy Secretary General there and from 1985 to 1994 Secretary General himself at the Ministry of Interior.

Thereafter he became a member of parliament and served as Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries (1994-1998) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1998-2002). In 2002 he again became a member of parliament, where he served as faction chairman of the VVD party from 2003 to 2006. He stepped down after his party showed a disappointing return in the municipal elections.

In 2006 Van Aartsen took a job with the European Commission as coordinator of a European Union project to lay a gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Austria.

On 27 March 2008 he was installed as Mayor of The Hague.

Willem van Genugten

Willem van Genugten (1950) is Professor of International Law at Tilburg University and Dean a.i. of The Hague Institute for Global Justice. Further to that, he is Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota, USA (since 2000) and Extraordinary Professor of International Law at the North-West University, South Africa (since 2008). He studied law (graduation in 1977, with distinction) and philosophy (graduation in 1985, cum laude). His first job was Head of the Studium Generale Office, Nijmegen University (1977- 1985), followed by the position of Lecturer in Theory of Law at Tilburg University. In 1988, he defended his Ph.D. thesis at Nijmegen University, where he became a Professor of Human Rights Law in 1991 (until 2006).

He also holds the position of Chair of the standing Commission on Human Rights of the Dutch government (since 2003, member since 1991) and of vice-chair of the Dutch Advisory Council on International Affairs, of which the Commission is a part (member since 2003, vice-chair since 2009); he is Editor of the Netherlands' School of Human Rights Research Series (since 1999) and the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law (since 2005); Chair of WOTRO, Science for Global Development (part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) (since 2006); Member of the Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the International Law Association (since 2006); and Chair of the Royal Netherlands Society of International Law (since 2011).

In the past he has been Dean of the Law School of Tilburg University (2002-2004 and parts of 2010-2011). In addition, he has been Visiting Professor at the University of the North, South Africa (1996-2001); Chair of the Supervisory Council of a project on "Multinationals and Human Rights" (with participation by eleven Netherlands' based multinational enterprises) (1997-2000); Visiting Professor at Deusto University, Bilbao (1998-2000); Chair of the Board of the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research (1998-2008); Visiting Scholar at the Lauterpacht Research Center for International Law, Cambridge University (Oct. 2006); Academic Chair of the Hague Joint Conference on Contemporary Issues of International Law (2007); Program Chair of the biennial International Law Association Conference (The Hague, 2010); Chair of the Department of European and International Law, School of Law, Tilburg University (1998-2001 and 2005-2011).

The Influence of the PCA in International Law Courts

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Brooks Daly, Deputy General at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), discusses the influence the PCA has on other international court and tribunals.
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01 hr 16 min 48 sec

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