Gerald Fitzmaurice

Sir Gerald Gray Fitzmaurice (born  October 24, 1901 in Storrington , Sussex , †  September 7, 1982 in London ) was a British lawyer . After serving as legal advisor to the British Foreign Office from 1929 to 1960 , he served as a judge at the International Court of Justice from 1960 to 1973 . He then became a judge at the European Court of Human Rights in 1975 , where he remained until 1980.

Life

Gerald Fitzmaurice was born in Storrington in 1901 as the son of Vice Admiral Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice. He graduated to 1924 to study law at Malvern College in Worcestershire and at Gonville and Caius College of the University of Cambridge and received his license to practice law in 1925 at the British Bar Association Gray's Inn . He then worked as a barrister (attorney) before joining the civil service in 1929 as legal advisor to the British Foreign Office . After the beginning of the Second World War , he worked in the same function for the Ministry of Economic Warfare from 1939 to 1943 before returning to the Foreign Ministry, where he was deputy head from 1945 and head of the legal department from 1953 to 1960.

As part of his work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fitzmaurice took part in a number of important post-war conferences. In 1945 he was a member of the British delegation to the San Francisco Conference , where the Charter of the United Nations was signed. He also participated in the drafting of the statutes of the International Court of Justice for the United Kingdom and was a member of the delegations to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and the Japanese Peace Conference in San Francisco in 1951 . He represented the United Kingdom several times in the UN General Assembly and, as deputy head of his country's delegation at the Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1958 and 1960, played a key role in the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Law of the Sea . He also served on several occasions as UK legal counsel before the International Court of Justice.

In 1955 Gerald Fitzmaurice took over his compatriot Hersch Lauterpacht's position in the United Nations International Law Commission , of which he was a member until 1962. After Lauterpacht's death, he was also elected as his successor as judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague , where he worked until 1973. He was also a member of the Arbitration Tribunal in the Beagle Conflict from 1971 to 1977 . From 1975 to 1980 he served as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg . He then worked several times as a consultant and mediator in international disputes. Although he did not hold an academic position in his life, he taught in 1948, 1957 and 1973 as a lecturer at the Hague Academy of International Law and gave guest lectures at the London School of Economics and at King's College London , among others .

Gerald Fitzmaurice was with Alice, geb. Sandberg, married with whom he had two sons. He died in London in 1982 . His younger son married Malgosia salmon , daughter of Gerald Fitzmaurices counterpart at the International Court of Justice Manfred Lachs , currently a professor of international law at Queen Mary and Westfield College of the University of London operates.

Awards

Gerald Fitzmaurice was accepted into the Institut de Droit international in 1948 , of which he was president from 1967 to 1969, and in 1954 he was made the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George . Three years later he was appointed Queen's Council and 1961 Master of the Bench (senior appointed member) of the Gray's Inn Bar Association. The Universities of Edinburgh (1970), Cambridge (1972) and Utrecht (1976) awarded him an honorary doctorate . In 1974 he was made an honorary member of the American Society for International Law . The headland of Fitzmaurice Point on the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula has been named after him since 1985 .

Works (selection)

• The Law and Procedure of the International Court of Justice: General Principles and Substantive Law. Oxford 1950
• A British Digest of International Law: Compiled Principally from the Archives of the Foreign Office. London 1965-1967

literature

• John G. Merrills: Judge Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice and the Discipline of International Law: Opinions on the International Court of Justice, 1961-1973. Kluwer Law International, The Hague 1998, ISBN 9-04-110538-7
• Anthony Carty, C. Carty, Richard A. Smith: Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice and the World Crisis: A Legal Adviser in the Foreign Office, 1932-1945. Kluwer Law International, The Hague 2000, ISBN 9-04-111242-1
• Gerald Gray Fitzmaurice. 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. 282