When watching yesterday's initial appearance of Goran Hadzic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), it once again hit me: these days, the most important people in the Capital of International Law (The Hague) are three East Asians.
So, who are these three men (yes, they all are of the male species)?
First there's O Gon Kwon from South Korea, he is the Vice-President of the ICTY. Kwon presided over Hadzic' initial appearance yesterday.
Those who watched the live-stream may have been struck by his calm nature and easy-going approach. He was serious enough, but had a light touch in steering the proceedings with his excellent, if slightly American, English. I met him briefly once, he seemed like a very nice and easy-going person.
Kwon's career started with a race through the ranks of the South Korean judicial system. During a mid-career sabbatical, he obtained an LL.M. from Harvard. I'm told it's quite common among talented South Korean lawyers to be sent abroad for some time to acquire new insights.
The most serious test for Kwon right now is presiding over the case against Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader. Karadzic is one of the big fish currently being tried by the court. People on the Balkans and beyond will want to see that Kwon and his two fellow judges handled the case fairly and transparently.
Then there's Owada Hisashi from Japan, the current president of the International Court of Justice. Owada, who's almost 80 years old, made his way through the ranks of Japan's Foreign Ministry in the years after the US occupation of Japan. Even though some might say the International Court of Justice is a somewhat boring Court as it only deals with protracted, complicated issues between states, the ICJ made headlines a number of times in the last few years. The opinion on the wall/fence (where you stand depends on where you sit..) between Israel and the Palestinian Territories stirred controversy in the region. Similar controversy erupted after a vastly different case in which the Court opined that the unilateral declaration of indepence by Kosovo did not violate international law.
Owada taught law at universities around the world, in Japanese society one of the most high-regarded positions to hold. Even more galvanizing for his position as a member of Japan's elite is the fact that his daughter is married to Crown Prince Naruhito, the heir of Japan's imperial crown.
The last of the three leading East Asians in The Hague is President Sang-Hyun Song of the International Criminal Court, again from South Korea. He probably has the most interesting job of all three in The Hague. The ICC is still very much a start-up legal institution and its rules of procedure are still evolving. The ICC has a global mandate to prosecute individuals accused of the most serious crimes, and the court's energetic prosecutor Argentinian Moreno-Ocampo is determined to make full use of those powers. The ICC however is primarily engaged with African situations and is only slowly starting its first courtcases, primarily involving the situation in the DRC. Its jurisdiction combined with Ocampo's temparent does make for some interesting outstanding arrest warrants, ie for Libyan leader Ghaddafi and Sudanese president al Bashir.
With all the attention devoted by the ICC to Africa, Song travels there quite frequently where his messages about international criminal justice are said to get to a more favorable audience for the fact that he is not an envoy from a Western government.
Even though East Asians rule quite a bit of the roost in the International Legal Capital, it's too early to say that anyone of them had a distinct cultural impact on international legal practice or in specific rulings. In international (criminal) cases, a team of judges usually forms an opinion, thus reducing the possibility of the personal impact of one judge. And, with strict term limits imposed on judges serving in the world of international law, the presence of East Asian (vice-)presidents in The Hague may go as quickly as it came.
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