(See October 19th entry)

The two really exciting speakers at Nuremberg were Hans-Peter Kaul, the German judge at the ICC, who talked about Das Vermächtnis von Nürnberg – The Legacy of Nuremberg, and Lee A. Casey, from Washington D.C., who talked about the Position of the U.S. Administration on the ICC.

Before them, Klaus Kastner talked about The Nuremberg Trials. Vom gerechten Krieg zur Ächtung des Krieges – From a just war to rejection (outlawing? scorning?) of war, and Christoph Safferling about comparative procedure in the Statute of Rome.

Dr. WilliamSheldon, the director of the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut in Nuremberg, presided. There was some discussion afterwards, but it was with the audience, not much between the speakers, who probably know each other’s opinions after many years of negotiating.

There’s a report in German in the Nürnberger Nachrichten. The talks will be available on the site of the Oberlandesgericht Nürnberg, which is a good site.

The symposium was held in the courtroom where the Nuremberg Trials took place. I counted only 29 in the audience at the beginning. Maybe there were 35 later. It was a pathetic turnout. I don’t know where these things are advertised. I heard as a member of the DAJV, the German-American Lawyers’ Association, and I think quite a lot of the audience came from the Amerikahaus, either employees or people who do English conversation courses there. There were at least two journalists there, because I talked to them in the break. There were at least two photographers – one of them had a large digital camera with huge lenses, which I greatly coveted. Obviously the speakers were speaking for a wider audience than us.

Hans-Peter Kaul was a superb speaker. He sounded as if he was speaking extempore on a subject he felt very strongly about.

There’s an article about him in Die Welt online, and an interview of a few months ago. He stated a number of facts about the American reasons for not signing the Statute of Rome, and mentioned a number of Americans who are not against the ICC. He also emphasized the limits of the Court’s powers, to do away with some misconceptions about it.

Lee A. Casey said he was speaking as a private person and merely about his own opinion. He believes the USA should never sign the Statute. His main argument was that America became a nation because its people wanted to govern themselves, and the ICC is not subject to review by the American people. It is neither dependent on the people nor answerable to them. Clinton recommended not ratifying the Statute, because it lacks enough safeguards. There have been over 600 complaints lodged with the Court, most of them relating to matters the Court has no jurisdiction over because they happened before July 1st, 2003. These complaints often refer to American actions in Iraq, and they show there is a politically motivated attempt to obtain convictions of American citizens. aother point: some of the (only) 92 States Parties to the Statute are not noted for their systems of justice and any of these could have a US citizen prosecuted if that citizen were on their territory.

There is a summary of the US arguments against the ICC in German here . They can also be seen in the American Service Members’ Protection Act. There is an excellent summary here, including a summary of steps that should be taken to prevent the ICC from being implemented.

White collar boxing is a form of boxing for people in white collar professions. Gleason’s Gym in the USA has been putting on events for 13 years:

bq. Gleason’s Gym created the concept of White Collar Boxing. The need for this program arose because of the numerous men and women that began training at the gym in the mid [90?]s. The boxing workout is addictive and the non-amateurs and professionals wanted to compete. After conferring unsuccessfully with the Amateur Boxing President and the New York State Athletic Commission, Gleason’s Gym created it’s own White Collar league.

bq. Both men and women can participate in the shows. The bouts are 3 rounds of tow minutes each. Now winner or loser is declared and both participants receive a trophy at the end of the contest. Registered amateur Boxers and Professional Boxers are not permitted in the White Collar Boxing program.

Now the Real Fight Club in England is advertising an event for lawyers on November 20th:

bq. Starring white collar workers learning the art under our supervision who work in the legal profession for leading institutions such as: the State of New York, Davis Polk and Wardell, Allen & Overy, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, S J Berwin, Linklaters, CMS Cameron & McKenna, Richards Butler, Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan Chase Bank, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Judicium and many more – in 3 x 2 minute round non-decision bouts regulated by the IWCBA

I’m sure they’d take German lawyers as well. I believe some of them go to gyms.

I read about this in the Tuesday law section of the Times Online, for which there is or was free registration. They had an article about a New York judge being flown in.

bq. Judge Maier is no novice — he took up boxing in 1997 — but this is the first time that he will have fought at an event at which all the boxers are lawyers. He is the veteran of 51 white-collar fights, the last of which was against a performance artist who filmed their bout by means of a camera strapped to his head. “He kept telling me to hit him hard,” Judge Maier says. “But I wouldn’t. White-collar boxing is about fun, not hurting people.”

Denise Howell reports a new blog. The author is Andis Kaulins, a German of Latvian descent (see some Latvian tartans – I thought tartans were purely Scottish). He studied law in the USA and practiced as a lawyer there for many years, and he has taught Anglo-American Law Legal Research and Legal Writing (I’m not sure where the commas should go) in the law faculty at the University of Trier. He has a website and a blog, LawPundit. (Irritating clock follows your mouse cursor).

ADDED LATER: My snotty remark about the clock in the last line was unexpectedly effective, and the clock has now been removed (perhaps you would have liked it!)

At the Zeiser & Ress law bookshop near the Nuremberg law courts today, I found a small dictionary:

bq. Rechtsbegriffe deutsch – englisch – französisch
Prof. Dr. Dieter Krimphove
Die schnelle Übersetzungshilfe: deutsch-englisch-französiches Wörterbuch mit über 1.700 Begriffen aus den wichtigsten Rechtsgebieten. Auf der CD-ROM: alle Begriffe alphabetisch sortiert nach englischen und französischen Wörtern, plus Rechtsbegriffe im lateinischen Original.
ISBN 3-448-05636-7,
Best.-Nr.00758-0001
Preis: EUR 9.90

It looked good in parts, with some definitions in the German and some remarks on usage in the English. I nearly bought one, just out of curiosity, but then I saw that page 88 and page 96 were identical, and contents of the real page 88 was missing. That was in more than one copy, so if you’re interested, watch out.

Word seems to have got out that lawyers are not prepared to pay money for a more comprehensive (and useful) law dictionary, so this follows Köbler’s Rechtsenglisch and Lister/Veth Taschenwörterbuch Recht.

I found a photograph of Professor Dieter Krimphove (who has written three other taschenguides). I’m not sure that it was taken with a digital camera. Here’s a better one.

Via Bloggerheads (posted on October 20th, no permalink, with reference to Frank Burns), yet another article entitled Lost in Translation, this time from Newsweek. This is about the FBI’s need for Arabic speakers.

bq. The FBI has no shortage of applicants who want to be translators. In the month after 9/11, some 2,000 queued up. But three of four applicants drop out when they learn the stiff requirements. Security has been a touchy issue ever since the bureau discovered in 2001 that one of its top counterintelligence officials, Robert Hanssen, had been a Russian mole for almost two decades. So the loyalty test is tough. Dozens of Arabic-speaking Sephardic Jews from Brooklyn, N.Y., failed to qualify when they declined to renounce their Israeli citizenship. Applicants must submit to polygraph tests. Background checks on translators who have lived abroad for many years are difficult and time-consuming. Easier just to nix the well-traveled, foreign-born candidate. In the end, more than 90 percent of applicants fail to make the grade.

The title Lost in Translation is in the news because of the film, of course. But there is an interesting autobiography of the same name, by Eva Hoffman, who emigrated as a child from Poland to Canada in the 1950s. I read this a few years ago. I think a weblog has reminded us of it lately, but I can’t find the reference. However, wood s lot quotes an interesting text on it, from TRANS: Internet journal for cultural sciences, in English, French and German.

I have an opportunity on Tuesday 21st to attend a day of talks and discussion in Nuremberg.

The topic is the International Criminal Court. I don’t know much about it so I did some reading online. The books I have are too old.

The ICC came into existence on July 1st, 2002, when 60 states had ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Now, 92 states have done so.
The ICC has a website (this was hard to find).

You can download the important documents there.

The court deals with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (known as the ‘core crimes’). Germany wants crimes of aggression, such as starting a war of aggression, to be included, but they aren’t yet. There is also a PDF file with the elements of the crimes.

For a person to be prosecuted at the court, the crime must have been committed after July 1st, 2002, and either the territorial state where the crime was committed or the state of the defendant’s nationality must be a party. That means that a US citizen who committed one of these crimes in Afghanistan, for instance, could be prosecuted – the USA is not a State Party, but Afghanistan is.

There is a Coalition for the International Criminal Court, according to whom one hot topic is ‘Article 98’ agreements (after Article 98 of the Rome Statute):

bq. US-proposed bilateral agreements seeking to ensure the non-surrender of US nationals and contractors to the International Criminal Court. … alternately referred to as so-called ‘Article 98’ agreements, bilateral immunity agreements, impunity agreements or bilateral non-surrender agreements.

Some German documents here.

One of the speakers on Tuesday is Dr. Christoph Safferling of Erlangen University, talking about comparative procedural aspects in the Rome Statute – Anglo-American and Continental ideas of criminal prosecution (is that ‘Continental’ correct in English? The Germans sometimes call civil law kontinentaleuropäisches Recht, but I’m not sure we do). An Internet search produced a review of his book on the subject, which was completed before November 2000, when the finalized draft of the rules of procedure of the ICC appeared.

The book draws attention to some of the main differences between the Anglo-American and Continental legal systems which, despite these differences, `coexist under the same human rights concept’ (at 366). Safferling not only highlights the differences but also states the reasons for them. For example, when discussing the pre-trial stage, where the differences become most obvious, he describes the underlying rationale behind the use of a jury and considers whether there is a human right to trial by jury. He concludes that there is no such right and that the jury is a dubious institution which is out of the question for the ICC. Other areas of difference include the principle of objectivity, the decision to prosecute, the equality of arms principle, the separation of conviction and sentencing, questioning of witnesses, and pleas of guilty.

Other speakers are or may be Prof. Dr. Klaus Kastner (he was the President of the court in Nuremberg, but is now described as a professor at Erlangen University, Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Kaul, judge, The Hague (speaking about ‘From the Treaty of Rome to the ICC’ – could this mean the Rome Statute?), Lee A. Casey, of Baker & Hostetler LLP in Washington DC, and Prof. Dr. Michael P. Scharf from Cleveland University School of Law.