71 Facts About Richard Goldstone

Richard Joseph Goldstone was born on 26 October 1938 and is a South African retired judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from July 1994 to October 2003.

Richard Goldstone joined the bench as a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa, first in the Transvaal Provincial Division from 1980 to 1989 and then in the Appellate Division from 1990 to 1994.

Richard Goldstone is considered to be one of several liberal judges who issued key rulings that undermined apartheid from within the system by tempering the worst effects of the country's racial laws.

Richard Goldstone's work enabled multi-party negotiations to remain on course despite repeated outbreaks of violence, and his willingness to criticise all sides led to him being dubbed "perhaps the most trusted man, certainly the most trusted member of the white establishment" in South Africa.

Richard Goldstone was credited with playing an indispensable role in the transition and became a well known public figure in South Africa, attracting widespread international support and interest.

Richard Goldstone's work investigating violence led directly to his being nominated to serve as the first chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from August 1994 to September 1996.

Richard Goldstone prosecuted a number of key war crimes suspects, notably the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

In 2009, Richard Goldstone led a fact-finding mission created by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War.

In 2011, in the light of investigations by the Israeli forces which indicated that they had not intentionally targeted civilians as a matter of policy, Richard Goldstone wrote that if evidence which had been available later had been available at the time, the Richard Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

Richard Goldstone was born on 26 October 1938 in Boksburg near Johannesburg in South Africa's Transvaal Province.

Richard Goldstone's parents were second-generation immigrants: his maternal grandfather was English and his paternal grandfather was a Lithuanian Jew who emigrated in the 19th century.

Richard Goldstone attracted attention from the state security police by having contact with banned anti-apartheid groups, including the African National Congress.

Richard Goldstone practised corporate and intellectual property law as a barrister in Johannesburg for 17 years, establishing a practice that was "100 percent commercial".

In 1980, Richard Goldstone was appointed as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa.

Richard Goldstone served in the Supreme Court for 14 years, gaining promotion to the Appellate Division in 1989.

Richard Goldstone later said that his nomination to the bench created a "moral dilemma", insofar as South African judges were expected to uphold apartheid legislation, but that, "the approach was that it was better to fight from inside than not at all".

Richard Goldstone sought to retain his independence, refusing to kowtow to the authorities.

Richard Goldstone's ruling in the case of S v Govender in 1982 that evictions of non-whites were not automatically required by the Act led to the virtual cessation of such evictions.

In 1985, Richard Goldstone ruled that the government's mass sacking of 1,700 black staff at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto had been illegal.

In 1989, Richard Goldstone became the first South African judge under apartheid to take on a black law clerk, an African-American Yale Law student named Vernon Grigg.

Richard Goldstone used his judicial prerogatives to visit thousands of people who had been imprisoned without trial, including some who later became members of the post-apartheid South African government.

Richard Goldstone had by now become reputed as an impartial and unimpeachable judge, and was asked by ANC chairman Nelson Mandela to head the commission; it became known as the Richard Goldstone Commission.

Richard Goldstone continued to work as an appeals court judge throughout his time chairing the commission, hearing cases during the mornings and afternoons and then continuing through to midnight on Commission business.

The rivalry between the ANC and IFP was blamed for being "the primary cause" of violence and Richard Goldstone urged both sides to "abandon violence and intimidation as political weapons".

The government's security forces were found to have been involved in numerous abuses of human rights, though Richard Goldstone rejected Nelson Mandela's claims that President de Klerk was personally involved and described such suggestions as "unwise, unfair and dangerous".

Richard Goldstone is a great strategist and combines a deep humanity with a political sensitivity.

Richard Goldstone regarded it as "a vitally important safety valve" that provided a "credible public instrument" to deal with incidents that might otherwise have derailed the negotiations.

Richard Goldstone's work was to pave the way for the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995, a body that he strongly supported.

The commission's final report was strongly critical of the apartheid-era legal system but commended the role of a few judges, including Richard Goldstone, who "exercised their judicial discretion in favour of justice and liberty wherever proper and possible".

From July 1994 to October 2003, Richard Goldstone was a judge in the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which was newly established under the post-apartheid Interim Constitution.

Justice Albie Sachs described Richard Goldstone as representing "a sense of continuity" between the traditions of the past that managed to survive the years of apartheid, and the whole new era of the constitution that governs South Africa today.

Notable judgments written by Richard Goldstone included three important decisions on unfair discrimination and the right to equality: President v Hugo, Harksen v Lane, and J v Director-General, Home Affairs.

Richard Goldstone owed his appointment to the Italian chief judge of the ICTY, Antonio Cassese.

Richard Goldstone was approached by Cassese and expressed an interest in the position.

Richard Goldstone thought it was important to take what was the first offer of a major international position after South Africa ceased to be a pariah.

Richard Goldstone wanted Goldstone, who was one of the few South African jurists to have earned the respect of both blacks and whites, for South Africa's newly established Constitutional Court.

Mandela struck a deal with the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that Richard Goldstone would serve only half of his four-year term as prosecutor and would then return to take up his post in South Africa.

The president rushed through a constitutional amendment that would allow Richard Goldstone to be named, take an immediate period of leave to serve at the tribunal and then return to his spot on the Constitutional Court.

Richard Goldstone proved to be an ideal candidate, as he had been suggested by the French, was not too hot-headed for the British, was strong enough to satisfy the Americans and his credentials as a white South African who had opposed apartheid satisfied the Russians and Chinese.

Richard Goldstone served as the chief prosecutor of the two tribunals until September 1996.

Richard Goldstone was hindered by the inflexible bureaucracy of the UN, finding the newly established ICTY in a shambles when he joined the tribunal.

Richard Goldstone was instrumental in preventing the Dayton Agreement of December 1995 including amnesty provisions for those accused of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Some commentators had advocated including an amnesty as the price for peace; Richard Goldstone was resolutely opposed to this, not only because it would enable those responsible for atrocities to escape justice but because of the dangerous precedent it could set, where powerful actors such as the United States could bargain away the ICTY's mandate for political convenience.

Richard Goldstone lobbied President Bill Clinton to resist any such demands and made it clear that an amnesty would not be a legal basis for the ICTY to suspend indictments.

Richard Goldstone's actions were later credited with making the negotiations a success.

The chief US negotiator, Richard Goldstone Holbrooke, described the tribunal as "a huge valuable tool" which had enabled Karadzic and Mladic to be excluded from the talks, with the Serbian side represented instead by the more conciliatory Milosevic.

When he retired from the Office of the Prosecutor in 1996, Richard Goldstone was replaced by the distinguished Canadian lawyer Louise Arbour.

Richard Goldstone was a member of the International Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina which was established in 1997 to identify Nazi war criminals who had emigrated to Argentina, and transferred victim assets there.

Richard Goldstone was chair of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo from August 1999 until December 2001.

Richard Goldstone insisted that he would not follow a one-sided mandate but would investigate any abuses committed by either side during the conflict.

Richard Goldstone said that he initially not been willing to take on the mission unless the mandate was expanded to cover all sides.

Richard Goldstone has criticised the United Nations Human Rights Council's selective endorsement of the report his commission compiled, since the resolution adopted chastises Israel only, when the report itself is critical of both parties.

Richard Goldstone denied the accusations, saying he felt that being a Jew increased his obligation to participate in the investigation.

Richard Goldstone contrasted the Israeli reaction with the failure of Hamas to investigate or modify their methods and procedures.

Richard Goldstone served as the founding national president of the National Institute of Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders, a body established to look after prisoners who had been released; chairperson of the Bradlow Foundation, a charitable educational trust; and head of the board of the Human Rights Institute of South Africa.

Richard Goldstone served for two terms, stepping down in September 2006.

Richard Goldstone was a Global Visiting Professor of Law at New York University School of Law in spring 2004, and in the fall, he was the William Hughes Mulligan Visiting Professor at Fordham University School of Law.

Richard Goldstone participated as guest faculty in the Oxford-George Washington International Human Rights Program in 2005.

Richard Goldstone was named the 2007 Weissberg Distinguished Professor of International Studies at Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisconsin.

Richard Goldstone continues as a member of the board of directors of the Salzburg Global Seminar.

Richard Goldstone serves as a trustee for Link-SA, a charity which funds the tertiary education of South Africans from impoverished backgrounds.

Richard Goldstone is currently a member of the Whitney R Harris World Law Institute's International Council.

Richard Goldstone serves on the Board of Directors of several nonprofit organisations that promote justice, including Physicians for Human Rights, the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, the South African Legal Services Foundation, the Brandeis University Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Economic and Social Rights.

Richard Goldstone was president of the Jewish training and education charity World ORT between 1997 and 2004.

Richard Goldstone was an honorary member of the Board of Governors of Hebrew University for over ten years prior to June 2010, when the university announced he had been dropped from the Board due to inactivity "for a decade or more".

Richard Goldstone holds honorary degrees from Whittier College, Hebrew University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Maryland, and the Universities of Cape Town, British Columbia, Glasgow, and Calgary among others.

Richard Goldstone was the first person to be granted the title, "The Hague Peace Philosopher" in 2009, as part of the new Spinoza Fellowship of The Hague, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Radio Netherlands, and The Hague Campus of Leiden University.

Richard Goldstone is an honorary fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, an honorary member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Richard Goldstone was a fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in 1989.

Richard Goldstone's family was non-religious, but he credits his Jewishness with having shaped his ethical views through being part of a community that has been persecuted throughout history.

Richard Goldstone has written forewords to books including Martha Minow's Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence and War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg, which examines the political and legal influence of the Nuremberg trials on contemporary war crime proceedings.