Australian Jurist Michael Kirby Named Co-Winner of Gruber Justice Prize

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Australian Jurist Michael Kirby Named Co-Winner of Gruber Justice Prize

NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY

Michael Kirby, retired judge of the High Court of Australia, was today named as the co-winner of the Gruber Justice Prize for 2010. The announcement was made in New York by the Gruber Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that awards the Gruber Prizes annually.

Michael Kirby is the first Australian to win the Gruber Justice Prize, although other Australians have previously been named as winners of Gruber Prizes in the field of science. These have included Professor Elizabeth Blackburn who won the Gruber Prize for Genetics in 2006 and who was named in 2009 as co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Psychology/Medicine for her discovery of telemerase. Professor Blackburn is one of a number of Gruber Prize winners who have later gone on to be awarded the Nobel Prize. There is no Nobel Prize for Law or Justice.

Each Gruber Prize is valued at $US500,000. It is awarded annually by an independent jury which ordinarily includes previous Gruber Prize winners. The jury that selected the 2010 Justice Prize winners was chaired by Justice Arthur Chaskalson, a past Chief Justice of South Africa. He was himself a co-winner of the Gruber Justice Prize in 2004. He played a leading role in the transition of the legal system of South Africa from the apartheid regime to multi-party democracy. The jury’s award of the 2010 Gruber Justice Prize was unanimous.

Co-winners of the 2010 Justice Prize

Michael Kirby will share his 2010 Gruber Justice Prize with two co-winners. These are:

Professor John Dugard of South Africa, who played a key role in drafting the human rights protections in the post-apartheid South African Constitution; and
The Indian Law Resource Center, an organisation established in the United States to promote the use of law to champion the legal interests of indigenous people in the United States and Latin America. The Center was a leading actor in securing the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2008.

Gruber Prizes are awarded to the recipients without preconditions. A ceremony to confer the Prize and to present a medal and a citation to the winners will be held at the George Washington University in Washington DC on Monday October 11, 2010.

On the announcement of the award to him of the Gruber Justice Prize, Michael Kirby said that he was proud to be named. He said: “I am conscious of the many people with whom I have worked over the years on human rights and justice who are equally deserving of recognition”. He went on: “There is also probably a need for a special Gruber Prize for the spouses and partners of Gruber Prize winners. My partner of 41 years, Johan van Vloten, definitely deserves a Prize for putting up with me. Probably the Victoria Cross”, Michael Kirby said.

Michael Kirby’s career

Until February 2009, Michael Kirby was a Justice of the High Court of Australia and Australia’s longest serving judge. He had held office successively as a Deputy President of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission (1975-83), as inaugural Chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission (1975-84), as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia (1983-4), as President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal (1984-96), and as a Justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009). He also served as President of the Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands (1995-6). For his service to law and law reform, he received Australian civil honours, including appointment as a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1983) and a Companion of the Order of Australia (1991). In 1991, he was named winner of the Australian Human Rights Medal and in 2009, he won the inaugural Australian Privacy Medal.

It is for work overseas and internationally that Michael Kirby is mostly known outside Australia. During thirty years, he has been engaged in projects for international bodies, including the OECD in Paris, the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva. He chaired the Executive Committee of the ICJ (1993-95); and in 1995, he was elected President of the ICJ, a post he held until 1998. These international activities were referred to by the Gruber Justice Prize jury in awarding the Justice Prize to Michael Kirby.

Mr. Kirby has also participated in the work of many United Nations agencies, including the World Health Organisation Global Commission on AIDS (1986-9), the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO (1996-2005) and as independent co-chairman of the Malawi Constitutional Conference (1994). That conference helped pave the way to multi-party democracy in Malawi, replacing the previous life presidency of the initial president, Dr. Hastings Banda.

In 1993, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali appointed Michael Kirby as UN Special Representative for Human Rights in Cambodia. In public speeches in Australia and elsewhere, Michael Kirby has said that his work in Cambodia, in helping against some political opposition to secure recognition of HIV/AIDS as a human rights issue, was possibly the most important and practical thing he had done for upholding human rights for ordinary people.

Michael Kirby presently serves in a number of UN posts, including:

As a member of the UNAIDS Panel on Human Rights, advising the Joint UN Programme on AIDS on the human rights implications of global AIDS strategies;
As rapporteur of the Judicial Integrity Group of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, preparing guidelines to uphold judicial integrity and to respond effectively to official corruption throughout the world; and
In April 2010, UNDP head and former New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, named Michael Kirby as a member of a new Global Commission on HIV and the Law. This has been established to help the United Nations respond to the spread of laws which increase stigma and discrimination and reduce the effectiveness of responses to the spread of AIDS. Such laws have recently been criticised in the Parliament of Malawi by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.

Post-retirement activities

Since Michael Kirby’s retirement from the High Court of Australia on February 6, 2009, he has increased his engagement with international human rights bodies. According to a spokesperson for his office, Judith Lord, upcoming activities in which Michael Kirby is presently engaged include:

A session in New York at the time of the announcement of the Gruber Justice Prize, where he is chairing the Technical Assistance Group established to support the new UNDP Global Commission on HIV and the Law (June 17-20, 2010);
Meetings in Colombo, Sri Lanka for UNAIDS and the Weeramantry Foundation on July 20-23, 2010. Whilst in Sri Lanka, Mr. Kirby will receive an Honorary Doctorate of Laws degree from the University of Colombo;
Meetings of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association in Vancouver (October 4-6, 2010). The Institute is considering new frontiers of global human rights, including recognition of the role that global poverty plays in the denial of basic human rights and addressing the denial of human rights to gays and other sexual minorities throughout the world; and
A meeting of the Hague Institute for Internationalisation of Law of which he is a board member (November 17-19, 2010). This is concerned with the growing influence of international law and the ‘democratic deficit’ commonly involved in international legal regulation.

In addition to participation in international meetings and commissions, Michael Kirby served for a year until June 5, 2010, as President of the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor at ten Australian universities.

Asked whether, with the award of the Gruber Justice Prize, he would be slowing down, Michael Kirby said: “No way. This Prize will encourage me to engage with new areas of justice and human rights”. “When I was young, very few Australians recognised the human rights implications of our policies towards Aboriginals, White Australia, women and gays. We have made progress. But there are new frontiers to address. At home, these include persuading Australians to join the rest of the world in adopting a national human rights charter”. On a global level, he suggested that “the links between human rights and the environment and issues of animal welfare would play a greater part in the human rights debates in the future”.

Michael Kirby was the first judge of any final national court in the world who was open about his homosexuality and his long-term relationship with his partner, Johan van Vloten. He was involved in work concerned with the AIDS epidemic after 1986 and included reference to his partner in the 1999 issue of Australian Who’s Who.

Previous Gruber Justice Prize winners

The previous winners of the Gruber Justice Prize include:

2003 – Canadian Supreme Court Justices Berth Wilson and Rosalie Abella, who were early advocates for women’s rights under Canadian law.
2004 – Successive South African Constitutional Court Presidents, Arthur Chaskalson and Pius Langa.
2005 – Dató Param Cumaraswamy of Malaysia, who served as the first UN special rapporteur on the independence of the judiciary.
2006 – President Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel whose court intervened to protect Palestinian interests in the building of the Israeli “separation wall”.
2007 – Justice Carmen Argibay of Argentina and Judge Carlos Cerda of Chile, who pioneered effective legal responses to the conduct of dictators and the military in their countries.
2008 – Judge Thomas Buergenthal, an Auschwitz survivor and now a Judge of the World Court.
2009 – The European Roma Rights Center, which defends the rights of Roma (gypsies) in Europe.

Other Australian Gruber Prize winners

Apart from Professor Elizabeth Blackburn who won the Gruber Prize for Genetics in 2006, other Gruber Prize recipients from Australia or with a link to Australia include:

Dr. Masao Ito – the Gruber Prize for Neuroscience 2006 (ANU).
Dr. Brian Schmidt – the Gruber Prize for Cosmology 2007 (ANU).
Dr. Jeremy Mould – the Gruber Prize for Cosmology 2009

Gruber Prizes are awarded each year in the categories of Cosmology (first awarded 2000); Genetics (2001); Neuroscience (2004); Justice (2001) and Women’s Rights (2003). According to the Gruber Foundation, an object of the prizes is to acknowledge “ground-breaking work” which “provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture”. Independent juries are asked to “choose individuals whose contributions in their respective fields advance our knowledge, potentially have a profound impact on our lives and, in the case of the Justice and Women’s Rights Prizes, demonstrate courage and commitment in the face of significant obstacles”. The Gruber Foundation website declares that the Foundation honours and encourages “educational excellence, social justice and scientific achievements that better the human condition”.
The Gruber Foundation also awards prizes for early career scientists and young scientific investigators. The awards are presented to individuals or organisations for contributions that have advanced the designated cause. In the case of the Gruber Justice Prize, the website declares that its purpose is “the cause of justice as delivered through the legal system”. The charter for the awards indicates that they are intended to “acknowledge individual efforts, as well as to encourage further advancements in the field and progress towards bringing toward bringing about a fundamentally just world”.

Peter Gruber’s Australian links

The Gruber awards are named after the benefactors, Peter and Patricia Gruber, and administered by the Foundation which has offices in New York City.

Mr. Peter Gruber escaped with his family from Hungary just before the Second World War. The family made their way as Jewish refugees to the then British India where the father established a successful business in providing uniforms to the Army. Later, the family moved to Melbourne, where the young Peter Gruber was educated in textile technology before departing for the United States. In New York, he became a successful investor, making and losing his wealth several times on the stock market. To mark the new Millennium, he and his wife, Patricia Gruber, in 2000 established the Gruber Prizes in chosen fields of special interest to them. The Gruber Justice Prize 2010 will be conferred at the George Washington School of Law in DC. The ceremony will be held in conjunction with a symposium which addresses the areas of interest and achievement of the Gruber Justice Prize recipients. Michael Kirby has already said that he will attend the award ceremony in Washington on October 11, 2010.

For further information on the Gruber Prizes, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or contact Bernitia Akin of the Gruber Foundation at 0011 1 340 774 8035 or by mail at 140 W 57th Street/10C, New York, NY, 10019, USA. Media materials and additional information on the Gruber Prizes can be found on the Foundation’s online news room: http://www.gruberprizes.org/press.php.

Contact

Michael Kirby will be in New York at the time of this announcement. His hotel is Roosevelt Hotel, corner of Madison Avenue and 45th Street, New York City. Telephone: 0011-1-212-661-9966. He may also be contacted at UNDP, C/- Dr. Mandeep Dhaliwal, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . To contact Judith Lord at Michael Kirby’s office in Sydney, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or telephone 02 9231 5800.

Upcoming new film on June 27, 2010

On Sunday June 27, 2010 at 10.20pm, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC1 will be telecasting the film “Michael Kirby – Don’t Forget the Justice Bit” (2010, Art Doco Films) on its Compass programme. The film covers the life and times of Michael Kirby from student days to the present, including references to his views on religion and values. It includes interviews with Johan van Vloten, Justice David Kirby and Geoffrey Robertson QC.

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