Centre for Accountability of International Organisations
Promoting the Rule of Law in International Organisations
Director Profiles

The Honourable Justice Laura Cox Q.C.

Laura Cox was appointed as a High Court judge in November 2002 and sits, from time to time, in the Employment Appeal Tribunal. She is a Bencher of the Inner Temple. Before her judicial appointments she had been the Head of Chambers at Cloisters in the Temple, where she specialised, wrote and lectured for many years in discrimination and employment, European and human rights law. She was appointed Queens Counsel in 1994 and was regularly named in legal directories as one of the leading practitioners in discrimination and employment, appearing in many of the leading cases in both domestic and European courts. In December 2002 she received a lifetime achievement award from Liberty and JUSTICE for her commitment to equality and human rights.

In 1998 Justice Cox was appointed and continues to serve as the United Kingdom expert on the international Labour Organisation Committee of Experts, monitoring ILO member states’ compliance with international labour standards. She was Chair of the Bar Council’s Equal Opportunities Committee for four years and has recently been appointed as Chair of the Equal Treatment Advisory Committee, the advisory committee to the Judicial Studies Board on equality and diversity issues. She is also the current Chair of the Board of Interights, the international human rights organisation established to promote the effective use of human rights law to protect rights and freedoms worldwide, in cooperation with lawyers, NGOs and judges.

The Honourable Justice ` Wilcox Q.C.

Senior Judge, Federal Court of Australia, Sydney 11.5.1984 Chief Justice, Industrial Relations Court of Australia, Additional Judge, Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory, Additional Judge, Supreme Court of Norfolk Island and additional professional duties particularly in the fields of environmental law and native title law.


The Honourable Justice Robert Nicholson A.O.


Robert Nicholson was appointed as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia in January 1995 and continues to sit as a member of that Court.  Prior to that he was a member of the Supreme Court of Western Australia for six and a half years.  Before that appointment he had been a Deputy President of the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a period of two years.    While a member of the Supreme Court he was also Chair of the Guardianship and Administration Board of Western Australia.  His professional life was spent in legal practice in Perth associated with the law firm now known as Freehills.
 
Internationally, he has been active in matters relating to law.  As Secretary of the LAWASIA Judicial Section, he has been a resource person to the Conference of Chief Justices of Asia and the Pacific for over a decade.  On behalf of the Federal Court of Australia he has been engaged in the delivery of judicial training and education in Indonesia and the Philippines.  As a member of the International Commission of Jurists he has edited the CIJL Yearbook and contributed to the ICJ Yearbook as well as conducted a trial observership on behalf of the Commission. 
 
Justice Nicholson was the Foundation Secretary-General of the Law Council of Australia.  Subsequently, he was a Deputy Secretary-General of the International Bar Association.  He has represented the Australian legal profession at a number of international meetings.  He is the author of a number of legal papers published in Australian legal journals.
 
 

The Honourable Justice Robyn Layton Q.C.

Formerly of Murray Chambers, Adelaide South Australia Queens Counsel specialising in Employment, Commercial and Administrative Law with the Adelaide Bar, was appointed Visiting Scholar with Flinders University, Adelaide in 2004 pursuant to the Law School’s Distinguished Legal Practitioners Programme. In addition to holding numerous professional and community service appointments, including State and Commonwealth appointments, she recently conducted a State Government Inquiry to review and make recommendations upon legislation, policy and practices regarding Child Protection in South Australia. During her period of Visiting Scholarship at Flinders, she worked in collaboration with Professor Andrew Stewart on an international labour standards research project. In February 2005, she was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia.

The Honourable Justice John Dowd A.O.

Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW, President of the International Commission of Jurists Executive Board, in addition to a range of international human rights professional work. Justice Dowd was elected to the International Commission of Jurists in 1999 and to the Executive Committee, of which he is the Chairperson, in March 2002.  His involvement with the ICJ, however, began with the Australian Section of the ICJ where he has served intermittently as President since 1975. Justice Dowd has also participated in numerous ICJ fact-finding missions and trial observations, including concerning the administration of justice in East Timor in 2000.
 
A judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales since 1994, Justice Dowd has played an important role in the development of the administration of justice in Australia and New Zealand. As a member of the Parliament, both in government and in opposition from 1975 to 1991, he served in numerous capacities including as Attorney General responsible for the Ministry of Justice and as a member of the Select Committee on Appointment of High Court Judges. During this time he was involved in reforms of the Supreme, District and Local Courts aimed at enhancing the courts’ efficiency and had an important involvement in the reforms of the criminal, tort and motor accident laws. He was also instrumental in the establishment of Australia’s Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1988. Justice Dowd was elected Chancellor of Southern Cross University, NSW in August 2002.
 
 

Professor Françoise Hampson

Barrister, Professor at the Department of Law, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, and Governor, British Institute of Human Rights. Françoise Hampson is an independent expert member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. She previously taught at the University of Dundee. She has acted as a consultant on humanitarian law to the International Committee of the Red Cross and taught at Staff Colleges or equivalents in the UK, USA, Canada & Ghana. She represented Oxfam and SCF (UK) at the Preparatory Committee and first session of the Review Conference for the Certain Conventional Weapons Convention.

Professor Hampson is co-Director of the Children and Armed Conflict Monitoring Unit based at the University of Essex and is a Governor of the British Institute of Human Rights. She has successfully litigated many cases before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and, in recognition of her contribution to the development of law in this area, was awarded Human Rights Lawyer of the Year jointly with her colleague from the Centre, Professor Kevin Boyle. She has taught, researched and published widely in the fields of armed conflict, international humanitarian law and on the European Convention on Human Rights.

 

Professor Emmanuel Decaux

Professor of Public International Law, University of Paris II, Pantheon – Assas, France. Member of the French National Consulting Commission on Human Rights, and supplementary member of the Sub-Commission of Human Rights of the United Nations. Professor Decaux is author of a number of works and articles notably on the international protection of human rights.


Dr David Lawson III

Partner, Bonnard/Lawson Geneva, member of the State Bars of California (1972), and admitted to the US Supreme Court (1978), Registered with the Geneva Bar Association, Switzerland (1990), and an Arbitrator, Chairman of Arbitrations before the Geneva & Zurich Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Member of the Swiss and ICC Arbitrations Panel. Dr Lawson has a degree in physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, where he graduated with honours in 1965. In 1971 he graduated top in his year in San Francisco, (Juris Doctor) and in 1972 attended the Hague Academy of International Law, in the Netherlands, obtaining a Diploma in Private International Law. In 1974 he obtained a doctorate in Law from Oxford University.

His professional experience as a Partner, Bonnard/Lawson Geneva includes Arbitration in numerous International Arbitration proceedings involving Construction disputes, commercial and trading disputes, investment and insurance disputes, employment, computer and internet disputes. 

As well as being a member of the California and U.S. Supreme Court Bars, Dr Lawson is President of the Foreign Section of Foreign Lawyers of the Geneva Bar Association (Ordre des Avocats de Geneve) and has written and lectured in the field of deontology and ethics.


Dr David Dror

Project Leader, Reinsurance for Community Health Schemes; Associate Director of research at LASS (Univ Lyon1) & visiting professor at Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam. Former senior Health Insurance Specialist with the International Labour Organization and President of the ILO Staff Union.

David M. Dror worked for many years as a Senior Health Insurance Specialist in the Social Protection Sector, leading a team of health financing experts from the International Labor Organization (ILO)/University of Lyon 1/World Bank. In the "Social Re" project, this team conceptualized and piloted re-insurance for community-financed health insurance schemes. Social Re won first prize in the Development Marketplace 2000. Dr. Dror has a D.B.A. magna cum laude (St. George) and an M.A. (Jerusalem). He has been Director of the Labor Conditions Department, Israeli Employers’ Federation and was the Lead Representative for the Council of the National Insurance Institute of Israel. He was appointed to the ILO Committee of Experts on Actuarial & Social Security Questions and helped to elaborate international social security standards during his years as Delegate to the International Labor Conference. Dr. Dror was Chief of the ILO-spell out (ITU) Staff Health Insurance Fund. He presented the paper "Concept of Community-Based Insurance" (with Joe Kutzin and Rainer Sauerborn) at the XV International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria, and the keynote address Financing Micro-Insurance: Perspective and Prospective at the 7th International Conference on System Science in Health Care (Budapest). Dr. Dror has written numerous papers and publications including Financing Micro-Insurance: Perspective and Prospective (with Duru, G.).


Dr Marc Henzelin

Admitted to the Geneva Bar 1987 and to the Bar in Lausanne 1993. Dr Henzelin is a partner at Lalive of Geneva, and a specialist practitioner in international criminal law, mutual assistance in criminal matters, economic criminal law, including money-laundering regulations and international law. His professional experience includes Acting Judge at the Geneva Appeal Court, and appearing before the Geneva and Lausanne Court as counsel. He has been a visiting Professor at Hong Kong University in the law of armed conflicts (2003), held a Research Fellowship in International Criminal Law on a Swiss Federal Scholarship, University of Geneva (2000-2001), was formerly a partner at Carré & Henzelin, Lausanne/Geneva (1995-2000), worked at the University of Geneva as a Research Assistant and Lecturer in Economic Criminal Law, International Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure (1995-1999), was a partner at Matile, Gross and partners, Lausanne (1993-1995). He has also worked in the field as Legal Advisor/Deputy head of mission for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Mozambique, Israel and South Africa from 1987-1992 and has acquired degrees in Law, a Masters in European Legal Studies and a Doctorate in Law at the University of Geneva for which he was awarded the Edgar Aubert for the best thesis in public law

Associate Professor James Franklin

Mathematician and Lecturer University of New South Wales, research interests: Neural networks, History of probability, Australian philosophy, Proof in Mathematics, Proof in Mathematics: An Introduction, Quakers Hill Press, 1996, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia, Macleay Press, Nov 2003.

Dr Franklin’s undergraduate work was at the University of Sydney (1971-75). He completed his PhD in 1981 at Warwick University, on algebraic groups. Since 1981 he has taught in Mathematics at UNSW, with occasional teaching also in Computer Science. His student supervision thesis topics for recent years include the application of neural networks to problems such as language understanding, stock market prediction and the simulation of early vision. Dr Franklin’s prodigious contribution to Australian literature, mathematics and a selection of opinions, interviews and debates may be found at: http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/.


Joost van Wielink, LL.M.

Joost studied law at Tilburg University, and has worked with several law firms in the Netherlands.  As former Deputy Director of the Amsterdam International Law Clinic and academic co-ordinator of the Public International Law and Criminal Justice Programme of the Department of International Law and the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam, his recent research has focused on the interaction between (European) human rights law and public international law, in which he has lectured extensively.

This research focus facilitated a creative initiative between CAIO and the Amsterdam International Law Clinic, linking university students to the practical legal problems faced by international civil servants.  Joost is a lawyer, author and teacher who has authored articles and texts in international law.  He now works as the Manager, Training Programmes, for the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation and Justitia et Pax in The Hague.  To find out more about the Centre, visit www.cjr.nl

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