Monday, November 07, 2005
Day One as Judge Dredd
Mainly taken up with administrative stuff, none of which is terribly exciting, though I do now have a UN badge, which excites me no end.
I will be working here for 6 months. In the first 2 months I will be in the Office of the President, Theodor Meron, whom I met. (He's a Polish-American who, like me, went to the Hebrew University. Must be why I got the job.) The president hears interlocutory appeals from the trial and appeals courts on various procedural matters. I imagine I'll be involved with writing and researching those.
For the following 4 months, I will be in Trial Chamber III, working on the Milosevic trial. My judges are from Scotland, Jamaica and South Korea. (And my housemates are from Norway, Sweden and the US. And my office mates are from Canada, France, Ireland and Bosnia via the UK.) What exactly I will be doing I don't know yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it involved research and writing. I think my legal writing will improve a lot here.
In between seeing various admin people, I sat in on two of the trials, in the public gallery. (I don't want to breach any confidentiality--though I know nothing confidential yet--so when I write about trials or hearings, it will only be about those things fully available to the public. You can watch, listen to or read about them here. And I think it would be wiser not to write about the trial I am working on at all. But I'll get a better picture closer to the time.)
I took away some impressions from each trial.
In the first, the difficulty of translation comes through (all open proceedings are simultaneously translated into English, French, Albanian and Serbo-Croatian). The time lag while everybody waits for translations gives it a strange drawn-out character, and renders virtually impossible any chance (for the lawyers, at least) of getting a rhythm going. I think it must be very tough for an examining lawyer, though I guess people get used to it. What also may make it difficult, especially for those reared in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, is the ability and propensity of the judges to question the witnesses directly. It can take things places where the attorney had no desire of going. (Alternatively, I guess it could be a nice little break for the attorney.)
Sometimes the translation only makes things more confused: the English lawyer was asking the Serbian witness if there was a difference between the "ëxtended" and the "expanded" presidency, and I thought it quite possible that the translator was translating those 2 words the same way.
(As an aside, different languages can be a real difficulty in law, where the particular meaning of words is so important. Most treaties are written in English and French, and a large number in other languages as well. Sometimes, as we all know, words in different languages have quite different nuances and connotations. So how does the law resolve these potential problems? The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (and many treaties themselves) says versions of the treaty in different languages should be given equal authority, and the terms of the treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each language, which just ignores reality. OK, rant over.)
The translator, interestingly, would become indignant when the witness became indignant. In the other trial, by contrast, the translator was very calm while the witness seemed distraught. I say seemed because the witness was a protected witness, so her face was very pixillated on the screen and her voice sounded like a weeping giant.
But the translators play such an important role - it's vital, for justice and other reasons, that everybody know what's going on. I remember watching a capital trial in Johannesburg in 1990 where the only things translated to the witness, who didn't speak English, were direct questions to him: public discussions between the judge and the attorneys, questions to witnesses, nothing was translated. I really felt for this guy sitting there not comprehending the large majority of what was happening while his life literally hung in the balance.
One other impression: when the UN security guards (at least one of whom is South African, and a number, intriguingly, are American) entered or left the court, they bowed to the judge, like karateka in a dojo.
Coming Up: Our House
I will be working here for 6 months. In the first 2 months I will be in the Office of the President, Theodor Meron, whom I met. (He's a Polish-American who, like me, went to the Hebrew University. Must be why I got the job.) The president hears interlocutory appeals from the trial and appeals courts on various procedural matters. I imagine I'll be involved with writing and researching those.
For the following 4 months, I will be in Trial Chamber III, working on the Milosevic trial. My judges are from Scotland, Jamaica and South Korea. (And my housemates are from Norway, Sweden and the US. And my office mates are from Canada, France, Ireland and Bosnia via the UK.) What exactly I will be doing I don't know yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it involved research and writing. I think my legal writing will improve a lot here.
In between seeing various admin people, I sat in on two of the trials, in the public gallery. (I don't want to breach any confidentiality--though I know nothing confidential yet--so when I write about trials or hearings, it will only be about those things fully available to the public. You can watch, listen to or read about them here. And I think it would be wiser not to write about the trial I am working on at all. But I'll get a better picture closer to the time.)
I took away some impressions from each trial.
In the first, the difficulty of translation comes through (all open proceedings are simultaneously translated into English, French, Albanian and Serbo-Croatian). The time lag while everybody waits for translations gives it a strange drawn-out character, and renders virtually impossible any chance (for the lawyers, at least) of getting a rhythm going. I think it must be very tough for an examining lawyer, though I guess people get used to it. What also may make it difficult, especially for those reared in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, is the ability and propensity of the judges to question the witnesses directly. It can take things places where the attorney had no desire of going. (Alternatively, I guess it could be a nice little break for the attorney.)
Sometimes the translation only makes things more confused: the English lawyer was asking the Serbian witness if there was a difference between the "ëxtended" and the "expanded" presidency, and I thought it quite possible that the translator was translating those 2 words the same way.
(As an aside, different languages can be a real difficulty in law, where the particular meaning of words is so important. Most treaties are written in English and French, and a large number in other languages as well. Sometimes, as we all know, words in different languages have quite different nuances and connotations. So how does the law resolve these potential problems? The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (and many treaties themselves) says versions of the treaty in different languages should be given equal authority, and the terms of the treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each language, which just ignores reality. OK, rant over.)
The translator, interestingly, would become indignant when the witness became indignant. In the other trial, by contrast, the translator was very calm while the witness seemed distraught. I say seemed because the witness was a protected witness, so her face was very pixillated on the screen and her voice sounded like a weeping giant.
But the translators play such an important role - it's vital, for justice and other reasons, that everybody know what's going on. I remember watching a capital trial in Johannesburg in 1990 where the only things translated to the witness, who didn't speak English, were direct questions to him: public discussions between the judge and the attorneys, questions to witnesses, nothing was translated. I really felt for this guy sitting there not comprehending the large majority of what was happening while his life literally hung in the balance.
One other impression: when the UN security guards (at least one of whom is South African, and a number, intriguingly, are American) entered or left the court, they bowed to the judge, like karateka in a dojo.
Coming Up: Our House
