Gregory Gordon (lawyer)

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Gregory S. Gordon is an American professor and scholar of international law and former Legal Officer for the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTR. Gordon is known for his academic work calling for the criminalization under international law of a broader category of speech likely to cause and/or fuel mass atrocities (i.e., broader than mere incitement to genocide), and his book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition (Oxford University Press 2017) in which he advances this argument.

Contents

Career

Gordon served as a Legal Officer for the Office of The Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the Media Case. [1] Before leaving the OTP, he was assigned as an attorney for the first trial team established to prosecute the Media Case (which, at the time, also included attorneys James Kirkpatrick Stewart of Canada and Craig McConaghy of Australia). He went on to serve as a prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice, first with the Criminal Tax Section of the Tax Division (during which time he served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and as a liaison to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces), and then with the Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations (known as the "Nazi Hunting" unit). During his academic career, he has served as the director of University of North Dakota's Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies (where he also worked as a law professor) and has been a consultant for the Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, among other non-governmental organizations. [2] He is currently Professor of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, where he has previously served as Associate Dean (External Relations/Development) and Director of both the Research Postgraduates and Legal History LLM Programs. [3]

Views

Atrocity Speech Law cover has a picture of Joseph Goebbels. Atrocity Speech Law cover.jpg
Atrocity Speech Law cover has a picture of Joseph Goebbels.

Gordon supports establishing categorizing the body of law regulating the relationship between speech and international crimes as "atrocity speech law." The new appellation would also involve expanding the types of prosecutable offenses within its ambit. This would mean going beyond mere incitement to genocide (currently criminalized), and adding to the list of prosecutable offenses incitement to war crimes and incitement to crimes against humanity (inchoate offense, as they would be prosecutable, if the right elements were present, even if the target crimes advocated never took place). Gordon also supports criminalizing the ordering of atrocity crimes as inchoate offenses (at present, ordering can be prosecuted only if the target crime ordered is actually committed). [4] [5] He supports the prosecution of people who are guilty of atrocity speech, and argues that international criminal law has a deterrent effect on those who are contemplating committing mass murder. [4] Gordon has said that "if you don't prosecute the purveyors of these horrible messages, then you will definitely be looking at another genocide down the road". [6] He has analyzed the possibility of prosecuting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide and hate speech as the crime against humanity of persecution. [7]

Atrocity Speech Law

Gordon's book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition, which is about extreme hate speech in international law, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017 and has received multiple positive reviews. [4] [8] In the book, which Giovanni Chiarini has described as a "paradigm-shifting" work that "has helped change the very vocabulary we use to describe the rules and jurisprudence governing the relationship between hate speech and core international crimes," [9] Gordon delineates the boundary between protected free speech and speech which is likely to cause mass violence, which he believes should be outlawed under international law. Gordon criticizes the current state of law on atrocity speech, which he considers fragmented and incoherent. For example, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia came to different conclusions about the prosecution of hate speech as crimes against humanity (persecution), with the ICTR holding that speech that does not directly call for violence may be prosecutable, while the ICTY disagreed. Gordon proposes an expansion and systematization of the criminalization of atrocity speech. [4] Benjamin B. Ferencz, chief prosecutor of the Einsatzgruppen Trial, wrote the foreword to the book, which he praised as "an important cornerstone that will serve as a foundation stone for the future prosecution of crimes against humanity." [10]

Works

Related Research Articles

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Hate media is media that contributes to the demonization and stigmatization of people who belong to different groups. It has played an influential role in the incitement to genocide, with notable examples of it being Radio Televizija Srbije during the wars in Yugoslavia, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) during the Rwandan genocide, and Nazi Germany's Der Stürmer newspaper.

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International speech crimes are acts of speech which are criminalized under international law. Incitement to genocide is one example, but the Nuremberg trials and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted some defendants of crimes against humanity based on speech acts. For example, Serb politician Vojislav Šešelj was indicted for crimes against humanity, including "war propaganda and incitement of hatred towards non-Serb people". Serbian politician Radovan Karadžić was convicted of "participating in a joint criminal enterprise to commit crimes against humanity on the basis of his public speeches and broadcasts". Dario Kordić and Radoslav Brđanin were also convicted of crimes based on instigating violence in public speeches.

Accusation in a mirror (AiM) is a technique often used in the context of hate speech incitement, where one falsely attributes one's own motives and/or intentions to one's adversaries. It has been cited, along with dehumanization, as one of the indirect or cloaked forms of incitement to genocide, which has contributed to the commission of genocide, for example in the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. By invoking collective self-defense, accusation in a mirror is used to justify genocide, similar to self-defense as a defense for individual homicide.

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References

  1. ↑ "[MEDIA] - Nahimana et al - Stipulation of the parties regarding what would be the testimony of Crystal Nix-Hinds, Denise Minor and Gregory Gordon with regard to ducument obtained in Rwanda" (PDF). IRMCT. Retrieved May 8, 2024.
  2. ↑ "Professor Gregory Gordon joins the Sentinel Project as advisor on hate speech". Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention. 2013. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  3. ↑ "Gregory S. Gordon: Centre for International Law Research and Policy". www.cilrap.org. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Van Landingham, Rachel (March 29, 2018). "Punishing Tomorrow's Tweeting Goebbels". Lawfare . Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  5. ↑ Gordon, Gregory S. (2011–2012). "Formulating a New Atrocity Speech Offense: Incitement to Commit War Crimes". Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. 43: 281.
  6. ↑ "Gregory S. Gordon". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. May 21, 2009. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  7. ↑ Gordon, Gregory (2008). "From Incitement to Indictment - Prosecuting Iran's President for Advocating Israel's Destruction and Piecing Together Incitement Law's Emerging Analytical Framework". Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology . 98 (3): 853–920. ISSN   0091-4169. JSTOR   40042789.
  8. ↑ Pauli, Carol (July 20, 2018). "Atrocity Speech Law: Addressing Hate that Does Grave Harm". Human Rights Quarterly. 40 (3): 718–729. doi:10.1353/hrq.2018.0041. ISSN   1085-794X.
  9. ↑ "Revisiting Gregory Gordon's Groundbreaking Work "Atrocity Speech Law" as It Is Transformed from Book into Website | Global Justice Journal". globaljustice.queenslaw.ca. Retrieved May 30, 2024.
  10. ↑ Gordon 2017.
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