Denise Bindschedler-Robert

Denise Marcelle Bindschedler-Robert (born July 10, 1920 in Saint-Imier , BE ; † November 17, 2008 in Bern ; born Denise Marcelle Robert ) was a Swiss international lawyer . From 1975 to 1991 she represented Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights .

Life

Denise Robert was born as the daughter of Georges Robert and Marcelle César and the granddaughter of Pierre César in the Swiss municipality of Saint-Imier. She attended high school in La Chaux-de-Fonds , studied law at the Universities of Lausanne and Bern and was admitted to the bar in 1945. From 1946 to 1950 she was employed as a civil servant in the political directorate of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs . In 1949 she received her doctorate with a dissertation on the neutrality of Switzerland. The following year she married Rudolf Bindschedler (1915–1991), her supervisor at the time at the FDFA, who also made a name for himself in the field of international law. The marriage had three children.

Denise Bindschedler-Robert taught international law at the Geneva University Institute for International Studies from 1956. Eight years later she was appointed associate professor. She remained loyal to the university in this position until 1985, after which she lectured as an honorary professor. In 1966 she was elected as the first woman to the Synodal Council of the Christian Catholic Church in Switzerland , of which she was a member until 1985. In 1967 she was appointed a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross . She sat on its executive committee from 1973 to 1980, and from 1986 to 1990 she held the office of vice-president.

On April 21, 1975, Bindschedler-Robert succeeded Antoine Favre, who died the previous year, at the European Court of Human Rights. In the election, she surprisingly prevailed against the first-placed proposal by the Federal Council , the Vaudois Council of States Louis Guisan . After the Danish Helga Pedersen, she was the second woman to be given this office. Her activity at the Court of Justice ended in 1991. From 1990 to 1996 she headed the International Institute for Human Rights in Strasbourg .

Awards

• Medal Pax Orbis ex Jure (1979)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Freiburg (1982)
• Honorary membership in the International Committee of the Red Cross (1991)
• Walther Hug Prize (1993)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Strasbourg (1999)

Fonts

• Etude sur la neutralité suisse , Zurich: Ed. polygraphiques SA 1950 (Zurich studies on international law; 16) (thèse Univ. de Berne)
• together with Paul Guggenheim: Traité de droit international public. Avec mention de la pratique internationale et suisse , Genève: Georg 1953–1954
• Colloque sur l'Etat moderne et la Croix-Rouge , organized par l'Institut Henry-Dunant. Exposés by André Beaufre, Denise Bindschedler-Robert, Pierre Dorolle and Burgess Carr, Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant; Lausanne: Editions L'Age d'homme 1969

literature

• Hans A. Frei: Bindschedler (-Robert), Denise. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Urs von Arx, working for peace from the law . In: Christkatholisches Kirchenblatt 2008, No. 25, p. 5f.
• Erika Engel ( inter alia) In: Europäische GRUNDRECHTE-Zeitschrift (EuGRZ) 7 (1980), issue 5/6, p. 97.
• Jean Waline, Hommage à la Présidente Bindschedler-Robert ( Memento from May 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) of the International Institute for Human Rights (PDF file; 340 kB)
• Swiss Lexicon . Volume 1: A – Cha. Verlag Schweizer Lexikon, Lucerne 1991–1992.

Web links

• Publications by and about Denise Bindschedler-Robert in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Documents by and about Denise Bindschedler in the Dodis database of Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland