Geoffrey Robertson

The Trial of Vladimir Putin by Geoffrey Robertson

August 2024, no. 467

Vladimir Putin must be tried in an international court for ordering the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. He must be tried, not just indicted, and to do this a new international court explicitly intended to deal with leaders responsible for such territorial aggression must be created. Since the Russian president won’t appear before any international court, he will need to be tried in absentia. Nevertheless, such a trial is essential not only to uphold international law, but to deter other international leaders who are contemplating aggression.

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Who Owns History?: Elgin’s loot and the case for returning plundered treasure by Geoffrey Robertson

by Janna Thompson •

March 2020, no. 419

Janna Thompson reviews 'Who Owns History? Elgin’s loot and the case for returning plundered treasure' by Geoffrey Robertson

After his success in forcing the British Natural History Museum to return skulls and bones of Tasmanian Aboriginals, the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson was asked by the Greek minister of foreign affairs to ascertain whether international law could be used to induce the British to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. Although the project found favour with a succession of Greek prime ministers, the Tsipras government decided not to act on Robertson’s recommendations. This book is a revised version of his report, along with a discussion of demands for the repatriation of other cultural treasures.

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An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? by Geoffrey Robertson

by Neil Kaplan •

June-July 2015, no. 372

Neil Kaplan reviews 'An Inconvenient Genocide' by Geoffrey Robertson

April 2015 was the centenary of Gallipoli, an event deeply set in Australian history, but it was also the centenary of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the hands of the then Ottoman Empire. Yet the latter event is mired in controversy, and closure has not yet occurred. It was the first genocide of the twentieth century, but not the last.

Stephen Ward Was Innocent, OK: The Case for Overturning his Conviction by Geoffrey Robertson

by Paul Morgan •

May 2014, no. 361

Paul Morgan reviews 'Stephen Ward Was Innocent, OK: The Case for Overturning his Conviction' by Geoffrey Robertson

Who was Stephen Ward? And why does his fate matter today? The Profumo affair, with its mixture of sex, politics, aristocracy, and espionage, has become the archetypal scandal. In 1962, Jack Profumo was British Secretary of State for War (ministerial titles were more frank in those days) ...

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Dreaming Too Loud: Reflections on a Race Apart by Geoffrey Robertson

by Frank Bongiorno •

February 2014, no. 358

Frank Bongiorno reviews 'Dreaming Too Loud: Reflections on a race apart' by Geoffrey Robertson

If the London Australian expatriate community has an aristocracy of sorts – as it clearly does – then Geoffrey Robertson QC and the novelist Kathy Lette, his wife since 1990, would be among its leading nobility. Robertson and Lette mix with royalty, both real and literary (‘our daughters had been flower girls at Salman’s wedding – I can’t remember which one’). I would love to have been present when Robertson advised Diana, during her affair with James Hewitt, that the Treason Act of 1361 laid down the death penalty for any party to adultery with the wife of the heir to the throne. Did she blush or blanch?

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The Statue of Liberty: How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights by Geoffrey Robertson

by Patrick Allington •

March 2009, no. 309

Patrick Allington reviews ‘The Statute of Liberty: How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights’ by Geoffrey Robertson

In characteristically symbolic fashion, the Rudd government chose the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 2008) to announce a consultation process into human rights protection in Australia. Attorney-General Robert McClelland appointed a committee, headed by Jesuit priest and lawyer Frank Brennan, to consult the public on issues including whether Australia needs a bill (or charter) of rights and responsibilities. Geoffrey Robertson’s latest book, The Statute of Liberty: How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights, injects much-needed energy, imagination, and international context into this rather circumscribed debate. ‘I have spent my professional life making arguments based on bills of rights,’ says Robertson. As a distinguished and courageous human rights lawyer-activist, his emphatically pro-charter stance commands the thoughtful consideration of supporters, opponents, and equivocators alike.

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The Tyrannicide Brief: The story of the man who sent Charles I to the scaffold by Geoffrey Robertson

by John Button •

November 2005, no. 276

John Button reviews ‘The Tyrannicide Brief: The story of the man who sent Charles I to the scaffold’ by Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Robertson, the author of The Tyrannicide Brief, enjoys the same high public profile as those old lags who constitute the élite of Australian expatriates in London: Clive James, Germaine Greer, and Barry Humphries. In his case it is as a leading international human rights lawyer, the author of Crimes against Humanity (1999) and The Justice Game (1998), and host of the popular television series Hypotheticals.

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