Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 14 December
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
The Oz obscenity trial. Defending Julian Assange and Salman Rushdie. Establishing journalists’ right to protect sources. Defining ‘terrorism’ for the first time. Calling for the Vatican to be treated as a ‘rogue state’ until it stops protecting paedophile priests. These are just some of the landmarks in the career of renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, one of the most formidable and original legal minds in the world.
‘I started, in a sense, acting for the underdog and using the law as a way of … letting the underdog run free,’ he has said.
Geoffrey writes and broadcasts regularly on international legal issues. He creates Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals for television and ethics education. As a UN Appeal judge, he has ruled on the illegality of conscripting child soldiers and the invalidity of amnesties from war crimes. Mullahs without Mercy, Geoffrey’s new book, argues that international law is the only weapon which can be used to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. In it, he demonstrates, with chilling examples, why Iran cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons triggering a local and possibly global war.
This event is part of a double bill with 12 Angry People. Combined tickets for both sessions have booked out.
Featuring
Geoffrey Robertson
Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and head of the world’s largest human rights practice, in London. He has prosecuted Hastings Banda, defended Julian Assange and acted for Human Rights Watch in the proceedings against General Pinochet.
He served as the first president of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (which indicted Charles Taylor) and as a ‘distinguished jurist’ member of the UN’s Internal Justice Council. He has argued landmark cases at the European Court of Human Rights and The Hague war crimes tribunals, and has held office of Recorder (part-time judge) for many years in London.
His books include Crimes Against Humanity – The Struggle for Global Justice; The Tyrannicide Brief (the story of how Cromwell’s lawyers mounted the first trial of a head of state); Statute of Liberty and an acclaimed memoir, The Justice Game. He is a Master of the Middle Temple and a Visiting Professor at the New College of the Humanities. In 2011 he was awarded the New York Bar Association’s prize in international policy and law.
He lives in London.