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| Guest Blogger: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin Posted: 21 Jun 2010 02:50 AM PDT  It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (left) as today's guest blogger.Fionnuala holds the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Planning and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis. She's also Professor of Law at the University of Ulster and cofounder and Director of the university's Transitional Justice Institute, with offices in Belfast and Derry, respectively the largest and 2d-largest cities in Northern Ireland. In her guest post below, she discusses the release last week of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report on the 1972 paratrooper killings of civilians in Derry, placing the event in the context of transitional justice discourse. Fionnuala's previously been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, Visiting Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Associate Professor of Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a Law & Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University. She received her LL.B. and Ph.D. from the Law Faculty at Queen's University in Belfast, and also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia. As is evident from her list of publications (SSRN here), Fionnuala's an internationally published expert and scholar in the areas of human rights, gender, and other issues related to transitional justice, on feminist legal theory, and on states of emergency. Law in Times of Crisis (2006), which she co-authored with Minnesota Law Professor Oren Gross, received a 2007 Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law, the organization for which she just began a 3-year term as a member of the ASIL Executive Council. She's at work now on a book on gender, masculinities, and transitional justice, co-authored with IntLawGrrls Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn. Fionnuala's many awards include a Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, and the Lawlor fellowship. The Irish government twice has nominated her to the European Court of Human Rights. Fionnuala served as a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission by appointment of the Minister of Justice, from 2000 to 2005. She remains an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, and is also a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. She's just been invited to serve on the U.N. Roster of Experts for the Crisis Communications Unit, having already taken part: in a 2008 Expert Seminar organized by the Working Group "Protecting human rights while countering terrorism" of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force; in 2003 as U.N. Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making; and from 1996 to 1997 as a representative of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia. Fionnuala dedicates her post to the woman who was IntLawGrrls' 1st transnational foremother, whose anglicized name is Grace O'Malley (a favorite not only of yours truly, but also of IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Gráinne de Búrca). (credit for photo of statue of O'Malley on grounds of Westport House, County Mayo, Ireland) Referring to Grace by her Irish name, Fionnuala writes that
Heartfelt welcome!  |
| Bloody Sunday – Setting the Truth Free Posted: 21 Jun 2010 01:47 AM PDT (My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)  After decades of legal and political struggle to vindicate the innocence of thirteen persons killed during a civil rights protest in Derry on January 30 1972, known as Bloody Sunday, the report by the Hon Lord Saville of Newdigate was released last week to their families and a watchful local and global community.The Report of the The Bloody Sunday Inquiry spans 10 volumes. As previously posted on IntLawGrrls, it is unequivocal that the deaths were "unjustified and unjustifiable" and that all those shot were innocent civilians who had given no cause for the use of force again them by members of the British paratroop regiment. The symbolism of the Report's delivery last Tuesday was deeply significant. A packed house in the British House of Parliament in London and the crowd of which I was a part, at Guildhall Square in Derry (above left) -- both at centre stage -- waited and watched. (photo credit) A newly elected and conservative British Prime Minister, David Cameron (below right), in a speech before the House of Commons, gave no political space for dissension. (photo credit) He confirmed that the army had fired the first shots; that no warnings were given before the soldiers opened fire; that none of the casualties were posing a threat; that soldiers lied about  their actions; and that on behalf of the government and the country he was "deeply sorry".The Saville Inquiry was first commissioned by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998 as part of the then-embryonic Northern Ireland peace process – a confidence-building measure aimed largely at the nationalist community, whose faith in the rule of law and the neutrality of the state had been seriously undermined by the events of that day, and the subsequent and much derided inquiry by Lord Widgery which had exonerated the soldiers and the state of responsibility. The 12-year length of the Saville Inquiry proceedings was testimony to the complexity of the terrain it traversed, as well as to the continual obstacles placed in the way of proceeding by Britain's Ministry of Defence. The Inquiry's outcome was unexpected for its clarity, for its directness, and for the starkness of its findings. It also tenaciously confirms the importance of redeeming and affirming the truth of contentious actions by the state. The Report is received in the context of an ongoing political transition in a post-conflict society. It immediately raises the question of what comes next? An obvious question is whether the prosecution of soldiers for offences of murder or manslaughter for their actions on the day by Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service will be sought. Despite the clarity of Saville's report, success is less certain in an adversarial setting. Fair trial concerns for soldiers, the admissibility of hearsay evidence, the passage of time, as well as undertakings given by the Attorney-General in 1999 that witnesses who provided evidence to the inquiry would be protected, all pose prosecutorial challenges. It seems more likely that prosecution of witnesses (specifically soldiers) for perjury would be successful given the depth and scope of evidence in the report itself. The families of the dead and the wounded have stated that they will take some time to read and consider the report before making calls for further specific legal steps. But, in a wider context, the report has significant precedential importance for transitional societies. It demonstrates the capacity of determined victims to successfully challenge and force the state to account for its actions in violating human rights norms. In this, it has given great impetus to other families and communities who experienced human rights violations during the same conflict (including further incidents involving the same paratroop regiment). While the Prime Minister may have fervently hoped that Saville closes the circle of inquiry – it may well be that it has exploded the calls to deal fully with the "past" of the Northern Ireland conflict. Nonetheless, it is an important vindication of the state – particularly for the democratic state that has engaged in serious human rights violations – as the Report breathes life into the capacity of the rule of law to respond adequately and meaningfully to harms experienced by its citizens. This was deeply evident last Tuesday on the streets of Derry – as a community that has been largely alienated from the state clapped and cheered a British Prime Minister acknowledging the faults of the state and seeking forgiveness. In this, the Report also underpins the symbolic and communicative function of law – in its capacity to mend and offer individuals the means to heal deep harms and to bring communities "in" rather than to leave them out. Lord Saville's Report is both symbolically and practically important – for Northern Ireland and other conflicted societies addressing the past. The debate on "dealing with the past" in Northern Ireland has not likely been closed by this important report. Rather, it opens up the possibility of deeper and more sustained engagement as the transition goes forward.  |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2010 12:04 AM PDT  On this day in ...... 1996, Lucile Lomen (left) died in Seattle, Washington, 75 years after her birth in Nome, Alaska. She earned her undergraduate degree with honors from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Granddaughter of an attorney, Lomen then was graduated 1st in her law class at at the University of Washington, where she was editor of the Law Review. According to this article: She did not consider Harvard, for in 1941 the Harvard Law School did not admit women. The University of Washington Law School had admitted women from the time it opened its doors in 1899. In 1941, there were three women enrolled in the law school, including Lomen. Employed for October Term 1944 by another Whitman alum, Justice William O. Douglas, "Miss Lomen," as she was called, was the 1st woman to serve as a law clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court. As posted, it would be 2 decades before another Justice hired a woman clerk. (photo credit; a (c) photo of her at her Court desk is here.) In 1945 Lomen returned to her home state, where she practiced as an assistant attorney general and then as an attorney for General Electric, retiring in 1983. Asked years later about her clerkship, Lomen said: 'You know, there was nothing unusual about it. I mean it was unusual that I as a woman, but I was just a lawyer, and that is all I wanted to be.'  |
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