Charles De Visscher

Charles De Visscher

Charles Marie Joseph Désiré De Visscher (born  August 2, 1884 in Ghent , †  January 2, 1973 in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre ) was a Belgian lawyer . After early work in civil, social and labor law, he turned to international law under the influence of the First World War and held a number of high-ranking positions and offices in this area in the course of his career. He worked as a law professor at the universities of Ghent and Leuven and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and the Hague Academy for International Law , of which he was a member of the board of trustees from 1932. In addition, he was Secretary General and President of the Institut de Droit international (Institute for International Law), from 1923 a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and from 1937 to 1946 a judge at the Permanent International Court of Justice and from 1946 to 1952 at its successor institution, the International Court of Justice ( IGH). This made him one of two judges who worked at both courts, as well as the only judge from Belgium in the history of the ICJ.

Charles De Visscher's work under international law was thus shaped by both academic and practice-oriented activities. He has published a large number of articles in various areas of international law, including some significant work on new aspects such as the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict in the 1930s and on the concept of human rights after the Second World War . His main work, the book Théories et réalités en droit international public (Theory and Reality of International Law) published in 1953 , was voted the most outstanding new publication in the field of international law in the same year and was considered a classic just a few years later. Because of his work, Charles De Visscher was one of the most important lawyers in the field of international law in Belgium and internationally in the first half of the 20th century. In 1954 he was made the fifth and so far last honorary president in the history of the Institut de Droit international and was also an honorary member of the American Society for International Law and a member of the national academies of Belgium , the Netherlands , Spain and the Institut de France .

Life

Training and early work

Charles De Visscher was born in Ghent in 1884 as the elder of two brothers. Both his mother and his father, who worked as a doctor and professor of forensic medicine at the University of Ghent , he lost at an early age. He studied law at the university in his hometown as well as in Paris and finished his studies on October 8, 1907 with a doctorate ( Docteur en Droit ). After his admission to the bar, he initially dealt primarily with civil law , which was considered the leading legal discipline at the time, and published his first two legal treatises in 1909 and 1910. At the same time, he completed a degree in political science in February 1909 . In 1910 he married Hélène Mertens; the marriage had eight children. Immediately before the beginning of World War I , Charles De Visscher turned to social law, which was emerging as a new independent legal discipline at that time. He went to Paris and published a treatise on the concept of collective agreements in labor law there in 1911 under the title Le contrat collectif de travail . In this publication he saw the organized behavior of employees as an important step towards equality with employers and saw the conclusion of collective agreements as an important part of this organization. In 1911 he took over from Albéric Rolin , the brother of Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns , his teaching duties at the University of Ghent in the fields of criminal law and criminal procedural law and, after Rolin's retirement in 1913, the field of private international law . His first publication in the field of international law followed in the same year.

With the beginning of the First World War, Charles De Visscher retired to Antwerp in 1914 and a short time later to Oxford in England . It is certain that the war finally shaped his legal interests in the direction of international law (see François Rigaux, 2000 and Joe Verhoeven, 2000). He published several articles in English and French-language legal journals in England, in which he dealt with the breach of international law to which neutral Belgium was exposed by the German occupation. He also wrote two books on this subject in 1916, Belgium's Case: A Juridical Inquiry and La Belgique et les juristes allemands (1917 in German translation under the title Belgium and the German legal scholars ). After the end of the war he became legal advisor to the Belgian Foreign Ministry in 1919 and was involved in the negotiations that led to the establishment of the League of Nations in 1920 . In 1924 he became Dean of the Law Faculty of Ghent University. From 1920 he was also co-editor of the magazine Revue de droit international et de législation comparée , in which he published a large number of articles until it was discontinued due to the Second World War . A year later he was appointed associate and in 1927 member and general secretary of the Institut de Droit international (Institute for International Law). In addition, he was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague from 1923 .

Work at the Permanent International Court of Justice

The Peace Palace in The Hague, seat of the Permanent International Court of Justice and the Academy of International Law

In the same year Charles De Visscher appeared for the first time as legal advisor to the Romanian government before the Permanent International Court of Justice . The case, which is listed as the European Commission of the Danube Case in the annals of the court, concerned the competences of the European Danube Commission founded in 1856. Their jurisdiction had been extended to the Danube section between Galați and Brăila , which was on Romanian territory, through various agreements in which Romania was not involved . The case in which Charles De Visscher cited, among other things, the equality of states and state sovereignty as arguments for the Romanian position, was decided by the court to the disadvantage of Romania. In a similar case ( International Commission of the Oder Case ) about the responsibilities of the International Oder Commission for sections of the Oder that were exclusively on the territory of Poland , he was also unsuccessful in 1929 as a representative of the Polish government. In 1931 and 1932 he again represented Poland's interests in the preparation of two opinions of the Court of Justice. One of these cases concerned Poland's right to call at the port of the Free City of Gdansk with its warships under certain conditions ( Polish Warships in Gdansk Case ), the other the treatment of Polish nationals in Gdansk Case . In both cases, however, the court's decisions were to the detriment of the Polish position. His last case before the Permanent International Court of Justice in 1933 concerned the legal status of the eastern part of Greenland ( The Legal Status of Eastern Greenland Case ). This was controversial between Norway and Denmark after Denmark had claimed sovereignty over Greenland from 1921 and Norway had begun with a partial occupation of East Greenland from 1931. In this case, Charles De Visscher succeeded in representing the Danish position.

In 1931 Charles De Visscher moved to the Catholic University of Leuven , as the University of Ghent had adopted the Dutch language a year earlier . Six years later he gave up the post of general secretary of the Institut de Droit international, followed by his brother Fernand , who served until 1950. Influenced by the archaeological interests of his brother and his legal-historical work in the field of Roman law , he published a treatise on the protection of cultural assets under international law under the title La protection international des objets d'art et des monuments historiques . In the same year, the signing of the Roerich Pact led to the conclusion of an international treaty in this area of ​​law for the first time. Charles De Visscher then took over the chairmanship of a committee of experts that drew up a draft for a comprehensive convention on the protection of cultural property, which was adopted by the International Museum Office of the League of Nations in Amsterdam in September 1938 and as the forerunner of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property by Armed People Conflicts . In May 1937 Charles De Visscher was elected to succeed Edouard Rolin-Jaequemyns as judge at the Permanent International Court of Justice.

He served in this position until January 1946, although the court's activities came to a standstill in February 1940 as a result of the start of the war and were discontinued in 1942, during which time he was involved in seven decisions of the court. The subject of these cases was a dispute between the Netherlands and Belgium over the diversion of water from the Meuse by the construction of the Albert Canal in Belgium ( The Diversion of Water from the Meuse Case ), a dispute between France and Greece over the construction of lighthouses on the islands of Crete and Samos ( Lighthouses in Crete and Samos Case ), and the accusation of Belgium against the Spanish investigative authorities that the investigation into the murder of Belgian Baron Jacques de Borchgrave in Spain was not proceeding with the necessary care ( The Borchgrave Case ). Other decisions related to differences between France and Italy over mining rights for phosphates in Morocco ( Phosphates in Morocco Case ), a dispute between Estonia and Lithuania over the property and usage rights to a railway line ( The Panevezys-Saldutiskis Railway Case ), a dispute between Belgium and Greece about payments from Greece to a Belgian construction company ( The "Société Commerciale De Belgique" Case ) and a settlement between Bulgaria and Belgium for the delivery of coal by Bulgaria to a Belgian company that was responsible for generating electricity for the Bulgarian capital Sofia ( The Electricity Company of Sofia and Bulgaria Case ).

During the Second World War, Charles De Visscher was a chairman of a six-member, covert political committee in Belgium, which was in constant contact with the Belgian government in exile in London and served in an official capacity as the government's correspondent. On May 6, 1940 he was elected a full member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts. Just four days later, his eldest son Jacques, who, like his father, had become a lawyer, was killed in the war.

The International Court of Justice and later work

On September 26, 1944, Charles De Visscher was appointed Minister without Portfolio in the first Belgian government after the country's liberation. After the end of the war, he was a member of the Belgian delegation to the conference in San Francisco , where the United Nations Charter was drawn up in 1945 . In February 1946 he was elected judge at the International Court of Justice for six years . Alongside José Gustavo Guerrero from El Salvador , he was the only judge at the newly created court who had already worked at its predecessor institution, the Permanent International Court of Justice. During his time at the International Court of Justice, he was involved in eight decisions and six opinions. These cases included two reports regulating the admission of states to the United Nations (UN), founded in 1945, compensation payments by Albania to Great Britain for the damage to two British destroyers and the death of 44 British marines by sea ​​mines in Albanian territorial waters ( Corfu Channel Case ) as well as an expert opinion on the admissibility of claims by the UN against national governments regarding injuries to UN employees on duty. Other cases included, for example, a dispute between Great Britain and Norway over fishing rights ( Fisheries (United Kingdom v. Norway) Case ) and the clarification of the international status of South West Africa . In addition, Charles De Visscher worked on various committees of the court, which were responsible, among other things, for procedural rules and other special issues. The reasons why he was surprisingly not re-elected for a further term from 1952 on December 6, 1951, despite his reputation, is unknown. However, it is likely that political considerations were primarily decisive, for example the division of the votes of the European countries by another candidate, the Norwegian Helge Klaestad , and the support of the USA for a candidate from Latin America (see Philippe Couvreur, 2000).

In 1947, Charles de Visscher had with former Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland , the Brussels law professor Henri Rolin and other lawyers and diplomats in the founding of the Institut royal des relations internationales involved (Royal Institute of International Relations, IRRI), an independent think tank based in Brussels for research and information exchange in the field of international relations . In the same year he took over the office of President of the Institut de Droit international. In 1953 the book Théories et réalités en droit international public (Theory and Reality of International Law) appeared, which is generally considered to be the main work of Charles De Visscher. The American Society for International Law unanimously voted it the most outstanding publication in the field of international law in the year of its publication (see Josef L. Kunz, 1957), and just a few years later it was considered a classic (see Roger Pinto, 1957). Further French-language editions appeared in 1955, 1960 and 1970, and English and Spanish editions were also published. At the age of 70, Charles De Visscher withdrew from his academic duties in 1954 and was elected the fifth honorary president in the history of the Institut de Droit international. In the following years he worked several times as a mediator in international disputes and published papers on various aspects of international law.

His wife Hélène died on August 2, 1958. He himself died 15 years later at the age of 88. His son Paul De Visscher followed his father's interests and became professor of public and international law at the Catholic University of Leuven and from 1969 to 1981 general secretary of the Institut de Droit international. His daughter Françoise Leurquin-De Visscher also worked as a law professor in Leuven.

Act

Legal philosophical and political views

Max Huber, a friend of Charles De Visscher, whose views and writings influenced him

Charles De Visscher's point of view cannot be clearly assigned to a specific legal philosophy . He rejected natural law generalizations as well as rigid legal positivist constraints, and emphasized the need for a moral and social basis for law. He considered the reciprocal relationships between law and politics as well as the common legal norms of all peoples known as ius gentium (international law) to be particularly relevant in international law . He saw the individual conscience as the basis of both human society and law . He gave preference to practical considerations over theoretical formalisms and assessed the right from a utilitarian point of view by its usefulness. As a realist with regard to the possibilities and limits of international law, he saw it primarily as a tool of international politics and as a means of promoting common values ​​and enforcing fundamental principles, which he described in his publications as "human ends of power" (human goals of power ) designated. For him, these “human ends”, which he regarded as the foundation of international law and as a prerequisite for achieving a lasting peace order, included above all basic human rights and the commandment of humanity . In doing so, he spoke out against an unreflective application of fixed rules that was not measured on a case-by-case basis, including in areas of international law in which positive legal norms and corresponding institutions exist to enforce them.

His ideological principles were based in particular on the direction of personalism, which was shaped by the French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier . In his writings, he rarely mentioned other lawyers whose attitudes would have shaped him. The Austrians Hersch Lauterpacht , Alfred Verdroß-Droßberg and Hans Kelsen were among the few legal scholars whose work had an impact on Charles De Visscher and from whom he adopted some ideas , even if he disagreed with Kelsen on key issues and in particular criticized his right-wing positivist positions . The Swiss Max Huber , President of the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1928 to 1944, also influenced his views. He dedicated the fourth edition of his book Théories et réalités en droit international public to Huber, with whom he was friends , which was partly under the influence of Huber's work The Sociological Foundations of International Law . Among the lawyers whom Charles De Visscher influenced with his views were, among others, Wolfgang Friedmann , who was professor at the Law Faculty of Columbia University from 1955 until his death , the Frenchman Michel Virally , who worked at the Universities of Strasbourg and Geneva , and René-Jean Dupuy , who worked at the Collège de France (see Pierre-Marie Dupuy, 2000).

Life's work

Charles De Visscher's life's work is divided into various temporal and professional segments. Early work in civil, social and labor law was followed by a long career in international law, to which he took both an academic and, through his decades of experience as a lawyer and as a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a practice-oriented perspective. In addition to his work at the universities in Ghent and Leuven, his teaching activities also included courses at the University of Chicago and in 1923, 1925, 1929, 1935 and 1954 at the Hague Academy of International Law , of which he was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1932. In the roughly 15 years of his life that he spent as a judge at the Permanent International Court of Justice and its successor institution, he largely refrained from publications because, due to the requirement of judicial neutrality, he felt it was not appropriate to watch himself outside of court decisions on issues of international law express. Like most other judges from continental European countries, he largely dispensed with the possibility offered by the statutes of both institutions to formulate individual or deviating statements in the decisions and made use of it only twice in the course of his career.

After finishing his work as a judge, Charles De Visscher published his main work Théories et réalités en droit international public . In this book, which was divided into four parts, he mainly dealt with the interplay of power and law in the field of international relations , in accordance with his legal philosophical views . Among other things, he looked at the corresponding historical development from the emergence of modern states to the beginning of the Second World War (first part), general relationships in the relationship between power and law (second part) and the tensions that sometimes result from this (third part). In the fourth part he devoted himself to the role of law in the peaceful settlement of international conflicts. The first two parts of the book, which remained almost unchanged in the four editions, essentially represented De Visscher's personal point of view. In it, he mainly described how, in his opinion, international law could and should be constituted. He presented the actual status of international law and its possibilities, especially in the third and fourth parts, the weighting of which was partly shaped by his own work. The third part of the book was subject to the most extensive changes between the various editions due to adjustments to new developments.

Charles De Visscher's academic interests in relation to international law were varied and in some cases characterized by temporary but significant work on new or special aspects. This applied, for example, to his work on the protection of cultural property in the event of a war in the 1930s and his work on the concept of human rights shortly after the end of the Second World War, which, among other things, formed the basis for a corresponding resolution by the Institut de Droit international. Other topics that he dealt with were, for example, the treatment of denial of justice under international law , the principle of nationality and the protection of minorities , the legal position of foreign nationals within the framework of the national case law of a country, and procedural aspects in international law. His work Le déni de justice en droit international from 1935 on denial of justice in international law is considered to be the most outstanding French-language publication on this subject until recently (see Jan Paulsson, 2005). Some of his relevant publications appeared only after his retirement in 1954, such as some papers published in the 1960s to summarize the status and future developments of law in various areas.

Awards and recognition

The awards and recognitions that Charles De Visscher received for his work included honorary doctorates from the universities of Paris , Nancy , Montpellier , Poitiers and Vienna as well as the honorary membership of the American Society for International Law (ASIL), which was awarded in 1947 . In addition, he was accepted as a member of various scientific academies , such as the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (Royal Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts of Belgium), the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen), the Spanish Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas and the Institut de France . The prizes awarded to him included, for example, the “ASIL Certificate of Merit” in 1955 for his book Théories et réalités en droit international public and in 1966 the Manley O. Hudson Medal , the highest award of the American Society for International Law .

The Center for International Law at the Université catholique de Louvain , founded in 1963, was named after Charles De Visscher in the year of his death; today it is part of the law school under the name Département de droit international Charles De Visscher ("Charles De Visscher" department for international law).

Works (selection)

• Belgium's Case: A Juridical Inquiry. Hodder and Stoughton, London 1916
• La Belgique et les juristes allemands. Payot, Paris 1916
• The Stabilization of Europe. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1924
• La protection international des objets d'art et des monuments historiques. In: Revue de droit international et de legislation comparée. 16/1935. Pp. 32-74 and 246-288
• Le déni de justice en droit international. In: Recueil des cours. 52/1935. Pp. 365-442
• Human Rights in Roman Law Countries. In: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 243/1946. Pp. 53-59
• The Fundamental Rights of Man. Basis of a Restoration of International Law. In: Annuaire de l'Institut de Droit International. 41/1947. Pp. 1-13
• Théories et réalités en droit international public. Editions A. Pedone, Paris 1953
• Problèmes d'interprétation judiciaire en droit international public. Editions A. Pedone, Paris 1963
• Aspects récents du droit procédural de la Cour Internationale de Justice. Editions A. Pedone, Paris 1966
• The effectivities en droit international public. Editions A. Pedone, Paris 1967

literature

This article is based in particular on four publications in the European Journal of International Law , which depict various aspects of Charles De Visscher's life. The information was taken in particular from the work of François Rigaux , while the publication by Philippe Couvreur describes in detail the work of Charles De Visscher at the Permanent International Court of Justice and the International Court of Justice. In addition, the biography published in the 13th Annual Report of the Permanent International Court of Justice in 1937 was used for comparison.

• François Rigaux: An Exemplary Lawyer's Life (1884–1973). In: European Journal of International Law. 11 (4) / 2000. Oxford University Press & European Society of International Law, pp. 877-886, ISSN  0938-5428
• Philippe Couvreur: Charles De Visscher and International Justice. In: European Journal of International Law. 11 (4) / 2000. Oxford University Press & European Society of International Law, pp. 905-938, ISSN  0938-5428
• Biographical Notes concerning Members of the Court. M. Ch. De Visscher, Member of the Court. In: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Permanent Court of International Justice. AW Sijthoff's Publishing, Leiden 1937, p. 26

The life's work of Charles De Visscher and his positions in legal philosophy are presented in detail in two other publications. The contents of his main work contained in the article are based on the publication by Joe Verhoeven and the information on the relationship between his work and other lawyers on the work of Pierre-Marie Dupuy.

• Joe Verhoeven: Charles De Visscher: Living and Thinking International Law. In: European Journal of International Law. 11 (4) / 2000. Oxford University Press & European Society of International Law, pp. 887-904, ISSN  0938-5428
• Pierre-Marie Dupuy : The European Tradition in International Law: Charles De Visscher. By way of an Introduction. In: European Journal of International Law. 11 (4) / 2000. Oxford University Press & European Society of International Law, pp. 871-875, ISSN  0938-5428

Additional information on the reception and aftermath of his works were taken from the following other publications:

• Josef L. Kunz : Theory and Reality in Public International Law. By Charles De Visscher. Translated by PE Corbett. Book review in: Harvard Law Review. 70 (7 )/1957. The Harvard Law Review Association, ISSN  0017-811X , pp. 1331-1336
• Roger Pinto: Theory and Reality in Public International Law. By Charles De Visscher. Translated from the French by PE Corbett. Book review in: University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 106 (2) / 1957. The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, ISSN  0041-9907 , pp. 321-325
• Jan Paulsson: Denial of Justice in International Law. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-52-185118-1 , p. 3

Further publications

• Manfred Lachs : The Teacher in International Law: Teachings and Teaching. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague 1982, ISBN 90-247-2566-6 , pp. 111/112
• Sally Marks: De Visscher, Charles. In: Warren F. Kuehl (Ed.): Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists. Greenwood Press, Westport 1983, ISBN 0-31-322129-4 , pp. 207/208
• Charles De Visscher. In: Arthur Eyffinger, Arthur Witteveen, Mohammed Bedjaoui : La Cour internationale de Justice 1946–1996. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague and London 1999, ISBN 9-04-110468-2 , p. 333

Web links

• Literature by and about Charles De Visscher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Département de droit international Charles de Visscher (department for international law named after Charles de Visscher of the Université catholique de Louvain , French)
• Société française pour le droit international: Charles De Visscher (1884–1973) (French, with picture)

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 30, 2007 in this version .