Simone Gbagbo & the International Criminal Court: The unsettling spectre of the female war criminal

(Our thanks for the opportunity to contribute this introductory post, the 1st of a 2-part IntLawGrrls series on women accused of international crimes. Part 2 is here.)

Simone Gbagbo

The International Criminal Court has unsealed a warrant for the arrest of Simone Gbagbo, whose husband, Laurent Gbagbo, President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 to 2011, has been in ICC custody since last November.
The warrant, unsealed Thursday, described Simone Gbagbo as the suspected indirect co-perpetrator of crimes against humanity – namely, murder, rape and other sexual violence, inhumane acts, and persecution – allegedly committed in Côte d'Ivoire from 16 December 2010 to 12 April 2011. Consistent with the most basic of fair trial rights, Gbagbo's innocence must be presumed unless she is convicted following a fair and impartial trial; however, the issuance of the warrant is noteworthy for several reasons.
► First, there is the fact that Côte d'Ivoire is not a state party to the ICC, although it has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court for a finite period.
In 2011, Pre-Trial Chamber III approved Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s request to use his propio motu powers to open an investigation into crimes committed in Côte d'Ivoire since 28 November 2010. In February 2012, the Chamber authorized an expansion of the investigation by the Court back to 2002. (The unsealed warrant, issued by the Chamber composed of Presiding Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi along with Judges Elizabeth Odio Benito and Adrian Fulford, is dated 29 February 2012.) Cases stemming from investigations into the Côte d’Ivoire situation, including the potential case against Simone Gbagbo, are therefore creating an important precedent for the Court in engaging with a non-party state, albeit one that has accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction.
► The warrant is also in itself groundbreaking.
Simone Gbagbo is the first woman to potentially face charges before the ICC. Should her case go to trial she will be one of a very few women charged in the history of international tribunals. (Prior IntLawGrrls post)
No women were tried in the first proceedings at Nuremberg and Tokyo, although, as Diane Marie Amann has posted, numerous women stood trial in subsequent post-World War II proceedings. Recent ad hoc tribunals have tried just two women: the Yugoslavia tribunal convicted Bosnian Serb politician Biljana Plavšić of persecution as a crime against humanity, while the Rwanda tribunal convicted a former Rwandan government minister, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, of genocide and crimes against humanity (including rape). An effort to prosecute a woman leader, Ieng Thirith, before the Cambodia tribunal has ended because she suffers from dementia.
► The relative novelty of the arrest warrant against Simone Gbagbo – and any future case against her – is important because it disrupts the “normal” gender archetypes in international criminal law, thereby making those archetypes suddenly visible.
Charging a woman with international crimes sparks questions about gender that we seldom ask when the subject of the proceedings is a man. It illuminates long-held assumptions embedded in law and in society about who the “normal” suspects/accused in international crimes are. It undermines the usual view of men as the agents and women as the victims of crime. It challenges the dichotomy that sets up men, masculinity and violence on one side and women, femininity and passivity on the other. It upsets the archetype of women as vulnerable, ‘rapeable’, and incapable of wielding power.

Laurent Gbagbo and Simone Gbagbo

The fact that Gbagbo is facing possible charges of crimes related to sexual violence will further challenge presumptions about power relations not only between men and women but also amongst each sex.
Should this case get to trial, the ensuing ICC case law has the potential to unsettle our assumptions about men’s and women’s roles in conflict situations.
► At the same time, any case against Simone Gbagbo could also serve to reinforce gender stereotypes.

Kanode, woman at Tokyo, in illustrious company

(credit)

(Part 2 of a 2-part series; Part 1 is here)

Attorney Grace Kanode Llewellyn (below left) worked as a prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (right), and holds the distinction of being the first woman to appear before an international criminal tribunal.
In my posting yesterday, I introduced Kanode to IntLawGrrls readers, and described what I have discovered thus far of her legal career. As I mentioned, when Judge William Webb of Australia, President of the IMTFE, greeted Grace Kanode Llewellyn before the tribunal on July 1, 1946, he stated,

'We welcome you cordially. You probably are the first woman to appear before an International Military Tribunal.'

Kanode, however, was not the only woman to appear before a war crimes tribunal during that nascent era of international criminal law.  Half a world away at Nuremberg, prosecutors were simultaneously prosecuting the worst criminals of Nazi Germany.
As we know from scholars such as Diane Marie Amann, Diane Orentlicher, and John Q. Barrett, who have brought to light the contributions of women at postwar trials in Nuremberg, one woman played a key role in drafting the London Charter that set up the International Military Tribunal, and in the later Nuremberg proceedings quite a few women distinguished themselves as prosecutors.
Yet Judge Webb’s kind welcome to Kanode is corroborated by records indicating that no woman appeared during the first “Trial of the Major War Criminals” at Nuremberg. This trial lasted from November 14, 1945, to October 1, 1946, and thus Kanode’s appearance at Tokyo, in July 1946, was likely the first by a woman.
Kanode was not the only woman at Tokyo:

Los Angeles Times photo of, from left, Eleanor Jackson, Virginia Bowman, Grace Kanode Llewellyn, Bettie Renner, and Lucille Brunner, published April 15, 1946

► The prosecution team also included, as depicted above, U.S. lawyers Eleanor Jackson, Virginia Bowman, Bettie Renner (about whom, this tragic article), and Lucille Brunner.
► Eleanor Bontecou worked for the War Department and helped prepare for the prosecution of major war criminals in the Pacific theater. (prior IntLawGrrls post)
► A Dutch woman was also listed as assistant prosecution counsel: Mrs. C.R. Strooker.
► American Helen Grigware Lambert gave the final summation against the defendant Naoki Hoshino, a highly influential government official of Manchukuo who served as the Vice Minister of Financial Affairs during the war.
Kanode’s obituary indicated that she was

'believed to be the first woman ever to figure in the proceedings of a military tribunal.'

Though she was the first, she was among illustrious company globally.

Grace Kanode: 'Local Portia' at the Tokyo Tribunal

(credit)

(Part 1 of a 2-part series; Part 2 is here)

When the Washington Post ran an article in 1939 announcing the second wedding of D.C. socialite and lawyer Grace Kanode Vickers to Col. Paul Llewellyn, it was titled, “Making Marriage Her Career.”  Luckily, the prediction was false.
Six years later, Kanode began work as an assistant prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (right).
The IMFTE was the second international war crimes tribunal. It was founded in 1946, shortly after the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, in the wake of the mass atrocities witnessed during the Second World War.  Over two years, the Tokyo Tribunal tried twenty-eight Japanese leaders for crimes of war.
Although the full scope of Kanode’s specific contributions to the tribunal remains unclear, she holds the distinction of being the first woman prosecutor to appear before an international military tribunal.
When I first learned of Kanode’s work as the first woman prosecutor at Tokyo via a footnote that referenced her, I became intrigued by her story. What, I wondered, convinced a young lawyer to relocate to postwar occupied Japan in 1946 to try war criminals? Out of curiosity to know more about her undocumented accomplishments, and with a penchant for historical research, I began to research her life and career.
Although this research may raise more questions than it answers, my posting today shares what I have learned thus far about Kanode’s career, mostly from archives not available online. I do so in the hope that more discoveries are soon to follow.

Early career in law
A 1931 graduate of the National University Law School (now George Washington University Law School), Kanode distinguished herself through leadership positions while a student. During her time there, she was elected president of the Cy Pres Club, the oldest and largest women’s club in the university.  After graduating, she served as law clerk to Chief Justice Alfred Adams Wheat of the U.S. District Court in D.C., and later worked with the law firm of former Secretary of State Robert Lansing.
She was also sartorially inclined, according to news media.  A 1934 Washington Post article on women attorneys and fashion described Kanode as an “aide to Chief Justice Wheat,” who “has sparkle and dash and wears clothes as they should be worn.”
As a representative of the Women’s Bar Association, Kanode attended the International Congress of Comparative Law in The Hague the summer of 1936. Upon returning, she remarked:

'[I]t was gratifying to note the courtesy and esteem for women in the profession among the men in Paris and London with respect to the use of association libraries and membership.'

She also served as a delegate on behalf of women lawyers at the International Law Conference in Santiago, Chile.  Soon thereafter, in December 1945, she relocated to Japan for eight months to serve as part of the prosecution team in Tokyo.

On March 19

On this day in ...
... 1976, Dr. Eleanor Bontecou (right) died at age 85 in Washington, D.C. (photo credit) A top member of the Bryn Mawr College Class of 1913, Bontecou had been a student of Felix Frankfurter at Harvard Law and in 1928 had earned her Ph.D. from what's now known as the Brookings Institute. A career as a law professor at the University of Chicago was cut short when she contracted sleeping sickness and was rendered bed-ridden in the 1930s. But by 1943 she was better, and embarked on a distinguished governmental career, including service in the Civil Rights Section of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice and in the War Department. In the latter, she inspected post-World War II proceedings at Nuremberg (thus making her the newest addition to our Women at Nuremberg series), and further helped to prepare war crimes cases to be tried in Tokyo by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. On retirement she aided persons harmed by the anti-Communist fever of the McCarthy era. Three years before her death, Bontecou gave an oral history interview to the Truman Library, which also houses Bontecou's papers.


(Prior March 19 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

On March 13

On this day in ...
... 1892 (120 years ago today), Janet Flanner was born into a mortician's family in Indianapolis, Indiana. She studied 2 years at the University of Chicago, then worked as a film critic at her hometown paper. Divorced from William Rehm after a few years of marriage, she had a reportedly lifelong, though not exclusive, relationship with another writer, Solita Solano. Flanner is best-known as The New Yorker's Paris correspondent, writing under the pseudonym "Genêt" from 1925 to 1975. As posted in our Women at Nuremberg series, Flanner covered the post-World War II trials at Nuremberg. (credit for 1944 photo of Flanner in war correspondent's uniform) A member of the American expat artistic community that included Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and others, she died in New York in 1978. Some of her writings are available here.

(Prior March 13 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

IntLawGrrls' cosponsorship of 5th IHL Dialogs to launch annual Katherine B. Fite Lecture

This year adds an exciting new venture to IntLawGrrls' annual cosponsorship of a convocation of the women and men who prosecute persons charged with international crimes.
To be featured at next month's International Humanitarian Law Dialogs will be the 1st Annual Katherine B. Fite Lecture, a keynote address in honor of a pivotal lawyer at the International Military Tribunal.
Our colleague John Q. Barrett spoke about Katherine Boardman Fite (1905-1989), the 1st of several women at Nuremberg, at the 2009 IHL Dialogs. His consequent article on her contributions to international criminal law -- and on her experiences as one of very few professional women in the early days of the Nuremberg trials -- was published, as "Katherine B. Fite: The Leading Female Lawyer at London & Nuremberg," in the 3d IHL Dialogs Proceedings available here.
A 1930 Yale Law graduate, Fite was a State Department attorney assigned to work with the U.S. Chief Prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson. (credit for above photo of Jackson and Fite) Her international law experience was critical to the 1945 drafting of the IMT Charter in London and the initial groundwork for the tribunal. Her papers, which include highly readable letters from Nuremberg to her parents in Massachusetts, were donated to the Truman Library and are available online here.
Honored to say that yours truly, IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann (left), will deliver the inaugural Fire Lecture. Other 'Grrls are sure to follow in the coming years.
As in past years (prior posts), this 5th installment of the IHL Dialogs will be held August 28-30 at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, not far from the Robert H. Jackson Center, a chief cosponsor of the event. This year's conference title: "Widespread & Systematic!" Crimes Against Humanity in the Shadow of Modern International Criminal Law.
Again central to the Dialogs will be the gathering of present and former international prosecutors. Scheduled to return are:
► Fatou Bensouda (right), International Criminal Court (photo credit);
► Serge Brammertz, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia;
► H.W. William Caming, who helped prosecute the Ministries Case before the U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg;
► Andrew T. Cayley, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia;
► Syracuse Law Professor David M. Crane, formerly of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the founder of these Dialogs;
► Robert Petit, formerly of the ECCC; and
► Stephen J. Rapp, formerly of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and, since 2009, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.
Scheduled new additions this year:
► Daniel A. Bellemare, Special Tribunal for Lebanon;
► Brenda J. Hollis (left), Special Court for Sierra Leone (photo credit); and
► Hassan Jallow, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Program highlights are as follows:

Sunday, August 28
► 2 p.m. Screening of The Response (2009), a film that uses as its script actual transcripts from detainee hearings of Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantánamo. Q&A to follow.

Monday, August 29
► 9:20 a.m. Keynote address by DePaul Law Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, head of the U.N. Human Rights Council Libya inquiry commission. Introduction by Ireland-Galway Law Professor William A. Schabas will introduce him.
► 10:30 a.m. Reports from the current prosecutors. Washington & Lee Law Professor Mark Drumbl will moderate.
► 1:30 p.m. Keynote speech by Northwestern Law Professor David A. Scheffer. Case Western Law Professor Michael Scharf will introduce him.
► 2:30 p.m. Bassiouni, Schabas, and Ambassador Hans Corell, former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations, will discuss the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, on a panel moderated by the Initiative's founder and driving force, IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Leila Nadya Sadat (right).
► 8 p.m. Keynote speech by Corell, introduced by Leila.
Tuesday, August 30
► 8:30 a.m. As described above, yours truly will deliver the 1st Annual Katherine B. Fite Lecture.
► 9 a.m. IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack (left) presents an Update on International Criminal Law.
► 11 a.m. Breakout sessions with current prosecutors on issues in international criminal law.
► 1:30 p.m. Keynote speech by International Bar Association Executive Director Mark Ellis, introduced by Vanderbilt Law Professor Mike Newton.
► 2:30 p.m. Elizabeth Andersen (right), Executive Director and Executive Vice President of the American Society of International Law, another IHL Dialogs cosponsor, proclaims the 5th Chautauqua Declaration. (photo credit)

Details here. For registration and additional information, contact Carol Drake at cdrake@roberthjackson.org.

Landmark trials museum opens

Almost 65 years to the day after an Allied effort began at Nuremberg, a permanent museum chronicling the Trial of Major War Criminals and subsequent proceedings is now open.

Inauguration of the Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse/Nuremberg Trials Memorial (above right) took place yesterday. (photo credit) Featured were comments by:

► Representatives of the 4 countries that comprised the International Military Tribunal: for Britain, Attorney General Dominic Grieve; for France, former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas; for Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; and for the United States, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen J. Rapp.

► A representative of Germany, 2 dozen of whose nationals were defendants at the year-long 1st trial: Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

► A representative of the Nuremberg prosecutors, Benjamin B. Ferencz. Ferencz served as Executive Counsel at the dozen subsequent Nuremberg trials conducted by the United States, and lead prosecutor at one of them, the Einsatzgruppen Case.

This week, additional commemorative events will unfold (alas, nothing honoring women at Nuremberg).

And from now on, visitors can tour the museum, located in the Palace of Justice at Bärenschanzstraße 72, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays. Among the artifacts in the exhibition is the dock that held the former leaders of the Third Reich; it'd been in storage for decades. Courtroom 600 (right), where the trial occurred and which this 'Grrl was honored to visit a few years back, is still a working chamber and so will be open only when court is not in session.

Details here.

Women at Nuremberg redux

At the IntLawGrrls-sponsored "Women and International Criminal Law" roundtable this Friday, I'll have the privilege to hear comments on the latest of my research regarding women who played roles in the Allies' Trial of the Major War Criminals, as well as subsequent trials that the United States held after World War II at Nuremberg, Germany.
The research owes much to IntLawGrrls' alumna Diane Orentlicher, now Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, at the U.S. Department of State. She dedicated her work on the blog to "Beatrice," the presumed name of an unremembered woman who prosecuted defendants at Nuremberg. Eventually, Diane determined that any number of women might have been "Beatrice." The most likely candidate was "Ceil" Goetz (above right); the quest for her and her sisters at Nuremberg first was explored in my "Women at Nuremberg" series of blog posts.
My roundtable essay, Cecelia Goetz, Woman at Nuremberg, tells more about Goetz, an American woman who turned 30 at Nuremberg. Included are not only details on how and why she became a prosecutor in the Krupp trial, but also a life story marked by many “first woman” chapters -- on the law review at New York University School of Law, at the U.S. Department of Justice, and, after Nuremberg, in the federal judiciary.
This essay follows upon another overview, "Portraits of Woman at Nuremberg," published recently in Proceedings of the Third International Humanitarian Law Dialogs (Elizabeth Andersen & David M. Crane eds., 2010). "Portraits" places women at the trials within the context of social developments during the post-World War II era. Mentioned are women who were defendants, journalists, or witnesses; however, the focus is on women, mostly Americans, who served as prosecutors at Nuremberg. Among the latter was Sadie Arbuthnot, depicted at left in a photo recently discovered in Harvard Library's digital trove.
Later a judge in the United States' court system in Germany and after marriage a lawyer at NASA, Arbuthnot too was a woman at Nuremberg.
More to come.

On August 7

On this day in ...
... 1890 (120 years ago today), a daughter was born in Concord, New Hampshire, to emigrants from Ireland who espoused socialism and feminism. Their daughter, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (left), would work for both throughout her life. She gave her 1st public speech, "On Women Under Socialism," as a teenager. Her oratory soon got her kicked out of high school, and she became a full-time Industrial Workers of the World organizer. For this group -- whose slogan was "One Big Union," and which was known colloquially as the "Wobblies" -- Flynn, nicknamed "Rebel Girl," organized children, women, and men who worked in industries across the United States. In the wake of World War I she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union; in 1940 the ACLU kicked her off its executive board because she belonged to the Communist Party. That membership also prompted a 9-month trial -- at which she defended herself -- that ended in a Smith Act conviction and a prison sentence served at Alderson federal prison for women. (Among the lawyers who represented Flynn at points in her career was Mary M. Kaufman, previously among the women U.S. prosecutors at Nuremberg.) Having become in 1961 the 1st woman Chair of the U.S. Communist Party, Flynn died in Moscow on September 5, 1964. The Soviet government of Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave her "a full-scale state funeral in Red Square."

(Prior August 7 posts are here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'Thousands would be a conservative estimate.'

-- Dr. Wendy Lower (below right), on the findings of her research respecting the number of women who took some part in genocide and other crimes of the Nazi era. The New York Times article that carries the quote further notes the significance of her addition of a "gender perspective" to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Historian Lower allows that no more than 2% of "perpetrators" were women. (credit for above-left photo from 1947 trial of Auschwitz-Birkenau guard Maria Mandel) But she adds that many other women aided Nazi efforts indirectly; for instance, by hosting parties for men who killed. (Consider too this prior IntLawGrrls post.) The reality that some women were agents of crime is one we 'Grrls have discussed a number of times, in relation not only to postwar accountability at Nuremberg, but also to contemporary tribunals such as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Go On! "Nuremberg: Taking Stock"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) This past year a permanent exhibit, "Courtroom 600 - Project "Memorial Nuremberg Trials," has been established in the Palace of Justice at which the International Military Tribunal and 12 subsequent U.S. military tribunals convened under Control Council Law No. 10. To recognize this development, Nuremberg’s Documentation Centre will convene a conference entitled "'That Four Great Nations': The Nuremberg Trials: Taking Stock" from October 1 to 3, 2009, at the Documentation Centre in Nuremberg. (credit for 2007 photo below right, by me, of Courtroom 600)
Session topics and participants:
► Nuremberg Categories of Crimes and their Significance for the Present, Christoph J.M. Safferling, David M. Crane, and Rainer Huhle.
► National and International Media Response to the Nuremberg Trial, Hans-Ulrich Wagner, Brian K. Feltman, and Nina Burkhardt.
► National Contributions and Perspectives on the International Military Tribunal, John Q. Barrett (to whom we tip our hats for news of this conference), David Cesarani, Annette Wieviorka, and Natalja Lebedeva.
► U.S. Intelligence Support and Subversion of the Nuremberg Trial's Process, Michael Salter.
► Problems of Criminal Defence at the International Military Tribunal, Sven Peitzner.
► The Holocaust on Trial?, Michael R. Marrus, Laura Jockusch, and Thomas Bryant.
► A Challenge for the Tribunal: Presenting films as Evidence, Christian Delage.
► Visit to Court Room 600, Klaus Kastner.
► Toward a Conjoined Understanding of the International Military Tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo, Neil Boister, Elizabeth Borgwardt, and James B. Sedgwick.
► Legacy of Nuremberg, Claus Kreß.
The conference website is here; registration details here.
I do hope they'll publish the papers, given that this promises to generate a rich information trove to complement this IntLawGrrl's Women at Nuremberg research.

Different take on women at Nuremberg

Research for my lecture this Monday on "Women at Nuremberg" turned up a 75-year-old reminder that not only ethnic status, but also gender status, was a target of totalitarianism during that era.
"Hitler Condemns Women in Politics" declared an Associate Press article published in a September 1934 edition of The New York Times.
The article reported on a speech in Nuremberg, at which Adolf Hitler, who’d become Germany’s Chancellor a year earlier, said:

‘Liberalism has a large number of points for women’s equality. The Nazi program has but one: this is a child. ‘While man makes his supreme sacrifice on the field of battle, woman fights her supreme battle for her nation when she gives life to a child.’

He linked notions that women might play other roles in society to his least-favored ethnic group – of course – and also to the apparent curse of "‘intellectualism.’"
In short, Hitler "derided the mixing of women in political matters," and "added that he believed parliamentary life tended to degrade women."
His audience?
Two thousand "woman politicians," Nazi Party organizers who "applauded his statements energetically."

(credit for photo of September 1934 rally at Nuremberg)

On August 20

On this day in ...
... 1947, following nearly "140 days of proceedings, including the testimony of 85 witnesses and the submission of almost 1,500 documents," U.S. military judges announced their judgment in the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg. Sixteen of the 23 defendants were convicted on charges related both to the systematic killing of persons deemed unfit on account of mental or physical impairments and to the ghoulish medical experiments conducted on concentration camp detainees. Of the 16 convicted, 7 were sentenced to death on this day and executed on June 2, 1948. To the lone woman defendant, Herta Oberheuser (above left), a physician who conducted experiments at the Ravensbrück camp, the judgment directed these words:

HERTA OBERHEUSER, Military Tribunal I has found and adjudged you guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as charged under the indictment heretofore filed against you. For your said crimes on which you have been and now stand convicted Military Tribunal I sentences you, Herta Oberheuser, to imprisonment for a term of twenty years, to be served at such prison or prisons, or other appropriate place of confinement, as shall be determined by competent authority.

As posted in our Women at Nuremberg series -- to be reprised later this month during the 3d Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs of which IntLawGrrls is a proud cosponsor -- Oberheuser would be released from prison in 1952 and would try to resume the practice of medicine, but would lose her license on account of camp survivors' protests. (photo credit) She died in 1978.

... 1818, according to Spanish WikiPedia, Kamehameha I, the King of Hawaii depicted on the U.S. quarter at right, signed a treaty which included a provision by which Hawaii "became the 1st country to recognize the independence of the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata," another name for the country today better known as Argentina. The entry serves as a reminder of Hawaii's former status -- about which we've previously posted here, here, and here -- as a sovereign subject of international law.

(Prior August 20 posts are here and here.)

Go On! IntLawGrrls cosponsors 3d IHL Dialogs, on "Women in International Criminal Law"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Delighted to announce that for the 1st time ever, IntLawGrrls is cosponsoring an international law conference!
It's the 3d Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, to be held August 31-September 1 at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, a community near Buffalo in upstate New York.
As posted here and here, last year's dialogs marked the 60th anniversary of the Convention Against Genocide; the 1st year, the 100th anniversary of the 1907 Hague Rules on the laws of war. This year's theme -- "Honoring Women in International Criminal Law From Nuremberg to the ICC" -- is ready-made for IntLawGrrls the world over. It's no surprise, then, that a number of 'Grrls were enlisted as the event was put together by our colleague David M. Crane, formerly Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, now law professor at Syracuse University College of Law.
Our thanks to David, who's also the founder Impunity Watch blog (one of the "connections" in our righthand column), both for the invitation and for welcoming IntLawGrrls blog as a cosponsor. Also cosponsoring are the Robert H. Jackson Center in nearby Jamestown, N.Y., which features the work of the Supreme Court Justice who served as Chief U.S. Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial of the Major War Criminals, Impunity Watch/Syracuse Law, the American Society of International Law, the Enough Project of the Center for American Progress, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Events on the program include:
Monday, August 31:
► Opening remarks, including a moment of silence for Dr. Alison Des Forges, the Human Rights Watch researcher who died in a plane crash this past February, as we then posted.
►Keynote lecture entitled "Katherine Fite, A Prosecutor at Nuremberg," by John Q. Barrett, Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law, New York, and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. As Barrett will detail, Katherine Boardman Fite, who'd received her law degree from Yale in 1930, served as Jackson's assistant.
► Keynote lecture entitled "Women at Nuremberg," by me, IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann, Professor of Law and Director of the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, and an ASIL Vice President. The presentation will be based on my IntLawGrrls series of the same name.
► An update from the current prosecutors, to be moderated by Leila Nadya Sadat, Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law and Director of the Harris Institute at Washington University School of Law, St. Louis. That institute's namesake, former Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney R. Harris, also is expected to attend these 3d annual dialogs.
► Luncheon speech by Gayle E. Smith (left), a cofounder of the Enough Project who's now a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama. Introducing her will be Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy advisor at the Enough Project.
► Roundtable discussion with the prosecutors on "Gender Crimes at the International Level," moderated by IntLawGrrl Diane Orentlicher, Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of the Law.
► A briefing by Sadat on the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative about which IntLawGrrls has posted here and here.
► Dinner speech by the Honorable Patricia M. Wald (right), formerly Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and, subsequently, a Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Introducing Judge Wald will be IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed, ASIL President, Freshfields partner, and a member of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, about which she's posted.
► Showing of NBC's The Wanted, with members of the cast.
Tuesday, September 1:
► "International Criminal Law Year in Review," presented by Michael P. Scharf, Professor of Law and Director of the Cox Center.
► "Reflections on Women in International Criminal Law," by the Honorable Marilyn J. Kaman (below right), Presiding Judge, Probate/Mental Health Court, Hennepin County, Minnesota, and from 2002-2003 a U.N.-appointed judge in Kosovo, where she presided over cases involving war crimes, organized crime, ethnically motivated disputes, and human trafficking.
► Roundtable with 3 women who've worked as international trial attorneys: Christine H. Chung, partner at Quinn Emmanuel and former senior trial attorney, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court (prior post); Lesley Taylor, Special Court for Sierra Leone; and Renifa Madenga, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Moderated by Dr. Kelly Askin, IntLawGrrl and Senior Legal Officer, International Justice, Open Society Justice Initiative.
► Lunch speech by Siri Frigaard (above left), Chief Public Prosecutor, Norwegian National Authority for Prosecution of Organised and Other Serious Crime. Former ICC attorney Chung will introduce her.
► Elizabeth Andersen, ASIL Executive Director, will lead the signing of the 3d Chautauqua Declaration.
Prosecutors expected to attend, besides those already named, include: Fatou Bensouda (below left), ICC Deputy Prosecutor (prior posts here and here); William Caming, former trial counsel at Nuremberg; Desmond DeSilva, former Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone; Richard Goldstone, formerly the ICTY-ICTR Chief Prosecutor and a Justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and currently leading a U.N. inquiry into the 2008-2009 conflict in the Gaza Strip; Hassan Jallow, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; Robert Petit, Co-Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; and Stephen Rapp, Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone since 2006, and now, as we've posted, President Barack Obama's nominee to become the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues.
For details, contact Carol Drake at cdrake@roberthjackson.org.

Women at Nuremberg: Defendants

(Final installment of IntLawGrrls' 5-part Women at Nuremberg series)

This series began with the observation of Peter Heigl in his German-English book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials that among those who played a role at Nuremberg were "a few female defendants." IntLawGrrls've understandably been loathe to claim these women as our own. But they exist, as photos of "SS women" in yesterday's New York Times reminded. Those who stood trial for war crimes have an undeniable, if unfortunate, international prominence, and at times their story too must be told.
Among the defendants convicted by the International Military Tribunal during the Doctors' Trial was Dr. Herta Oberheuser (right), a physician whose specialty was dermatology. For her part in nonconsensual medical experiments conducted on inmates at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Oberheuser received a sentence of 20 years, later halved. On release from prison 1952 she tried to open a medical practice but was forced to close it on account of former inmates' protests.
Women defendants further included a number of Nazi camp guards, prosecuted in proceedings such as as:
Buchenwald trial
Conducted by a U.S. military tribunal at the former concentration camp at Dachau. Among those convicted was Ilse Koch (left), wife of the Buchenwald Camp commander who was complicit in the atrocities committed under his command. Furor erupted in 1948, when her initial sentence to life in prison was cut to 4 years. "Koch was released in 1949, rearrested by German authorities, retried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. She committed suicide at Aichach prison in Bavaria in 1967."
Bergen-Belsen trial
A British military court adjudicated charges against 45 defendants, including: "the most notorious" Irma Grese (#9 at right) executed in 1945 along with Elizabeth Volkenrath and Juana Borman, plus at least 18 other women. Of these, 5 were acquitted; the rest received sentences ranging from 1 to 15 years.
Auschwitz trial
Conducted by Polish authorities in Krakow. Defendants included Therese Brandl, 45 when she was executed in 1947; Maria Mandel (below), 36 when executed in 1948; Luise Danz, sentenced to life in prison, released in 1956, and in 1996 subjected to a German trial that was halted on account of her age; Hildegard Lächert, released in 1956, then convicted in a German courtroom in 1981; and Alice Orlowski, sentenced to life in prison but released in 1957.

The crimes of which these women were convicted ought to be unimaginable, and will remain, here at least, unprintable.

Previous installments of in IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series: Prosecutors, Staffers, Press, Witnesses.

Women at Nuremberg: Witnesses

(Part 4 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

A characteristic of modern warfare is its catastrophic consequences for noncombatants; in particular, for women and children. World War II was emblematic of this phenomenon. It's little surprise, then, that the record made during proceedings at which "the entire ideology and bureaucratic reach of the Nazi regime were put to light," as Peter Heigl writes in his book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials, included testimony from a number of women.

Women's testimony had particular significance at 2 of the later trials.

Doctors' Trial

In what has come to be known as the "Doctors' Trial," the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg adjudicated charges against 23 German physicians alleged to have taken part in the Nazi program to euthanize mentally ill, mentally retarded, and physically disabled persons, or to have performed nonconsensual experiments on concentration camp inmates. Among the latter were Polish women who survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Northern Germany. Three -- Maria Kusmierczuk, Wladislawa Karolewska, and Jadwiga Dzido -- are shown above left talking with a nurse about their ordeal. Dzido was a Polish Catholic who'd studied pharmacology before the war (above right). At the December 22, 1946, trial session at left, Dzido stood mute as Dr. Leo Alexander, a Boston psychiatrist and neurologist, pointed to scars on her leg and testified about her mistreatment.

Based on the testimony of Dzido and 84 others, as well as 1,500 documents, the Doctors' Trial ended with the conviction of 16 defendants and the execution of 7. (photos courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives)

Justice Trial

There was also the 3d proceeding, United States v. Alstoetter, known as the Justice Trial. Witnesses included Anna M., whom Heigl describes as "one of countless women subjected to forced sterilization." (Forced sterilization arises, with regard to a male victim, in "Judgment at Nuremberg," the 1961 film based on that trial. In it a defense attorney throws a tu quoque jab at the Allied judges by quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' infamous 1927 condonation of a forced sterilization in the United States on the ground that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough.")

Of the 14 defendants who faced verdict in Alstoetter, 10 were convicted; 4 of them received life sentences and the other 6, from 5 to 10 years' imprisonment.

Still to come in IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series: Defendants. Already posted: Prosecutors, Staffers, Press.

Women at Nuremberg: Press

(Part 3 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

"Approximately 250 journalists crowded the press section of Courtroom 600 -- on some days such as on opening day, November 20, 1945, or the verdict announcement on August 31, 1946, every last seat was occupied," Peter Heigl writes, in his book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials, of media coverage of the 1st proceeding, known as the Trial of the Major War Criminals. Reporters hailed from a score of countries, including 80 Americans, 40 Français, 35 Soviets, 20 Poles, 12 Czechs, and 5 Germans. They were joined by broadcasters, photojournalists, and authors, all of whom came to see what was happening at Nuremberg.
This media throng included a number of women, some of whom are profiled in Nancy Caldwell Sorel's The Women Who Wrote the War. Women journalists at Nuremberg included:

Tania Long
During World War II the New York Herald Tribune's assignment of Long to its London office drew this objection from New York Times reporter F. Raymond Daniell, who'd cover the Scottsboro case, among others, before the war: "You don't want a girl. This is a man's job." Long, who'd been born in Berlin and educated in London and Paris, no doubt proved her mettle: within years the couple were married. For decades thereafter they were a dynamic journalistic duo; they're pictured above covering a press conference at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. While posted in Ottawa in 1954, the couple delivered remarks to the Empire Club of Canada. Long's account of her own experiences and observations on the world's growing interdependence began with this subtle prod to her hosts:

I am greatly honoured to be here today. Indeed I am very flattered to be here, since I understand that it is rare that meetings of this group are open to the ladies.

Daniel seconded the sentiment in his own remarks.

Martha Gellhorn

The journalism career of Martha Gellhorn (right) began with a gig covering haute couture in Paris in the Thirties, but the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the middle of that decade, and, it is said, the urging of her then-husband, Ernest Hemingway, turned her into a war correspondent. Gellhorn reported on the beach at D-Day, at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and at the Nuremberg trials. She covered the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama at age 81. When she died 8 years later, an admirer recalled Gellhorn's comment on her own work:

'I wrote fiction because I love to, and journalism from curiosity which has, I think, no limits and ends only with death.'

Rebecca West

Englishwoman Cicily Isabel Fairfield (left) took "Rebecca West," the name of an Ibsen character whom she once played, to write novels and nonfiction, including 2 books inspired by the post-World War II trials, The Meaning of Treason (1947) and A Train of Powder (1955).

Victoria Ocampo

Victoria Ocampo (right) was an Argentine intellectual and ally of Gabriela Mistral, namesake of an IntLawGrrl. Ocampo's "admirable" dispatches, spiced with accounts of participants' "'tics,'" are part of Testimonios. Series primera y quinta, published in Buenos Aires in 2000.

Erika Mann

The oldest daughter of novelist Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Mann, Erika Mann (right) is described as a "[w]riter, actress, and intellectual refugee from the Third Reich," and "one of the twentieth century's most intriguing nonconformists." This outspoken critic of Nazism

was one of the few women journalists covering the Nuremberg trials who attained access to the defendants. Mann's experience with cabaret irony attuned her senses to the macabre spectacle of unrepentant Nazis treating their trials as a performance. She later commented, 'no spookier adventure could be imagined.'

Janet Flanner

Paris-based Janet Flanner -- she is pictured at left with Hemingway -- wrote about World War II and its aftermath for the New Yorker. The Indiana-born expat had been a feminist activist and part of the Algonquin Round Table before the war. Her coverage of the postwar trial included this food for thought:

When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes.

Still to come in this Women at Nuremberg series: Witnesses, Defendants. Already posted: Prosecutors, Staffers.

Women at Nuremberg: Staffers

(Part 2 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

Images of the many women who played administrative roles during the Trial of the Major War Criminals and subsequent proceedings jump out at readers of Peter Heigl's book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials (2001). Women helped direct renovation of the courtroom. They translated documents, transcribed testimony, kept papers in order, and took dictation during witness interviews. Today we'll mention just 2 of those women.

A major-domo, if you will, seems to have been Captain Virginia Gill, Administrative Officer in the Office of Chief Counsel for war crimes. (Heigl also identifies her as the Executive to the Prosecution, in a photo of her greeting 4 visiting U.S. Senators.) Gill, her hand at her cheek, is depicted above during an April 1947 courtroom session. To her left are Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, a leading prosecutor and later author of a superb memoir of the trials; Gen. Lucius D. Clay; and another prosecutor, Joseph W. Kaufman, deputy Chief of Counsel. To Gill's right, a hatted woman identified only as "Mrs. Clay" and Brig. Gen. Leroy Watson.

Another remarkable staffer at Nuremberg was Edith Simon Coliver (left, in 1940). After receiving a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, she signed on with the U.S. Office of War Information, and helped as a translator at the San Francisco Conference that concluded with adoption of the U.N. Charter. Soon after she returned to her birthplace, Germany, to work at Nuremberg. As 1 article put it:

As a 23-year-old, Coliver translated the pretrial testimony of high-ranking Nazi officer Hermann Goering for American interrogators.
'He was not particularly thrilled to see a woman, a Jewish woman, as his interpreter,' she told the Bulletin in 1995.
Coliver surprised herself by later asking Goering to sign a program. 'Then, I was ashamed of myself,' she told the Bulletin. 'Why would I be getting an autograph from Nuremberg?' So she asked her boss to sign as well. He did, next to Goering's signature, and wrote 'To Edith Simon, who helped hang the same.'

(The incident no doubt took place during the trial. Goering indeed received the death penalty, but cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell.)

In her later years Coliver was an executive at the Asia Foundation, serving in the Philippines and Taiwan. The Bay Area-based "'woman of the world,'" who spoke not only German and English, but also French, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, and Mandarin, died in 2002 at age 79. Among her survivors is her daughter and our colleague, Sandra Coliver, Senior Legal Officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. (photo at right courtesy of Telford Taylor Papers, Columbia University Law School; at left, Berkeley's International House).

Coming next week in this Women at Nuremberg series: Press, Witnesses, Defendants.