Gunnar Lagergren

Gunnar Lagergren (born August 23, 1912 in Stockholm , † December 28, 2008 in Danderyd ) was a Swedish lawyer . In the course of his career he worked as a judge and president at various national and international courts and arbitration tribunals. From 1977 to 1988 he was a judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and from 1981 to 1984 President of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal .

Life

Lagergren studied at the University of Stockholm , first Mathematics , Philosophy and Economics , and then devoted himself to the study of law , which he in 1937 with the Master of Laws ended. In 1940 he was appointed judge at Svea hovrätt . In December 1943 he was offered a position at the Swedish Embassy in Berlin by Ambassador Arvid Richert , which he accepted. He became head of Section B, which was responsible for fulfilling Sweden's obligations as a protecting power .

After the end of the war, Lagergren resumed his work on Svea hovrätt. In addition, he worked as an arbitrator in disputes that were carried out before the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris . In 1953 Lagergren took up a post as judge at the International Court of Justice in Tangier , where he worked until 1956. He then worked for ten years as a judge in the Arbitration Commission for Goods, Rights and Interests in Germany , which had been set up in Koblenz on the basis of the contract to regulate issues arising from war and occupation . In 1957 he was also appointed as a judge from a neutral country to the newly established Franco-Saar Arbitration Court, of which the Italian lawyer Roberto Ago was appointed. Ultimately, however, no case was ever brought before the court. From 1964 to 1990, Lagergren also worked as a judge at the Supreme Restitution Court , first in Herford , then in Munich .

In December 1965, Lagergren was appointed by U Thant , then Secretary General of the United Nations , as president of a three-member arbitration commission that was supposed to decide the conflict between India and Pakistan over the Rann von Kachchh salt marsh . The negotiations turned out to be difficult and dragged on until 1969, when the legal dispute was ended with a ceremony in Svea hovrätt on September 22, 1969. India was awarded 90% of the area of ​​Rann von Kachchh, Pakistan 10%.

In 1966, Lagergren was appointed president of the Court of Appeal for West Sweden, but did not take up the position until the arbitration proceedings in the Rann von Kachchh case were over. He worked there for ten years, but also continued his international activities. In 1977 he was appointed judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg as the successor to Sture Petrén and held this office until 1988. In addition, he served from 1981 to 1984 as President of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and from 1986 to 1988 as President of a five-member arbitration commission that had been set up in the border conflict between Israel and Egypt over the city of Taba .

Lagergren was appointed Reichsmarschall in 1976 and was head of the Swedish court. However, he resigned from this office in 1982 as he was increasingly involved in work for the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.

In 1965, Lagergren was awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University . He was also a member of the Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Academies since 1980 .

family

In December 1943, Lagergren married Nina von Dardel, half-sister of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and niece of the Swedish painter Nils von Dardel . They had four children. Their eldest daughter Nane was born in Berlin in October 1944. She was married to Kofi Annan for the second time .

Works (selection)

• Delivery of the goods and transfer of property and risk in the law on sale . Norstedt, Stockholm 1954.
• Five important cases on nationalization of foreign property: decided by the Iran- United States Claims Tribunal . Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund, 1988.

literature

• Gunnar Lagergren: To Old Judge Remembers . With a foreword by George H. Aldrich. In: Leiden Journal of International Law . 15/2002, ISSN  0922-1565 , pp. 307-322.

Web links

• Obituary on the website of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (English; PDF file; 157 kB)
• Announcement of Gunnar Lagergren's death (with picture) (Swedish)