James Crawford, a judge at the International Court of Justice who was described as the pre-eminent international lawyer of our times, has died.
Crawford, SC, served on the court from 2015 until his death Monday in The Hague after a career as an academic and advocate in public international law. He was 72.
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Scholar, advocate, judge: James Crawford 1948–2021
James Crawford, who passed away on Monday, was the most influential Australian international lawyer of all time.
Many of us in the field hope for some measure of success as scholars, advocates, or perhaps as a judge. Crawford’s greatness in all three areas might have been infuriating had he not retained his humour, his modesty and his dedication to mentoring his students – actual and adopted.
As a student himself he moved from Adelaide to pursue a doctoral degree at Oxford, where he was one of the first supervised by the prominent international lawyer Ian Brownlie. A passing comment in Brownlie’s book that the literature on the creation of states was somewhat sparse led Crawford to propose a doctorate on the subject. Brownlie initially tried to dissuade him, given the size of the project. The resultant thesis was beyond the binding capacity of the local printers and now squats in the Bodleian Library as two fat volumes.
Among subsequent doctoral students (I was one of Brownlie’s last), it was rumoured that the examiners agreed only to read the first volume if Crawford could point to relevant sections of the second during his oral exam. It was also said that he was the reason for the introduction of word limits on subsequent theses – something unnecessary in the centuries prior to his arrival.
Crawford was responsible for some groundbreaking decisions, but also for rare instances of laughter in the World Court.
The significantly shorter book that was published in 1979, The Creation of States in International Law, launched an academic career that saw him rise to Challis Professor (1986) and later Dean of Sydney Law School (1990–92), culminating in the Whewell Chair in International Law at Cambridge (1992–2014), where he also directed the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.
Among his other distinctions, he was the first Australian elected to the UN International Law Commission (ILC), where he shepherded through draft articles on the responsibility of states. This fundamental topic had been on the agenda of the ILC since 1949, and four previous special rapporteurs had either completed their terms or died while trying to move the draft forward. More pragmatist than diplomat, Crawford jettisoned the most controversial sections to get broad agreement on a final text that was endorsed by the General Assembly in 2001.
It was as an advocate that Crawford achieved greater prominence, appearing in more than 100 cases across every form of international tribunal. He argued some 30 cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), notably on behalf of Australia in the East Timor case against Portugal (1995) and the Whaling case against Japan (2014) – though his very first ICJ case was representing Nauru against Australia (1992). (In all three, Crawford himself was on the side that ultimately prevailed.)
Read more at https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/scholar-advocate-judge-james-crawford-1948-2021
