Judge Patrick Lipton Robinson of Jamaica is the Tribunal’s current President, elected to this position by his fellow judges on 4 November 2008. He was re-elected on 26 October 2009. He was first elected as a judge of the Tribunal by the UN General Assembly on 16 October 1998 and has since been re-elected twice. His current term as judge expires in December 2010.
Judge Robinson began his long and distinguished career in public service working as a graduate teacher of English from 1964 to 1966, after which he spent three decades working for the Jamaican government. From 1968 to 1971, he served as a Crown Counsel in the Office of the Director of the Public Prosecutions. Between 1972 and 1998, he served briefly as Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and subsequently in the Attorney General’s Department as Crown Counsel, Senior Assistant Attorney-General, Director of the Division of International Law, and Deputy Solicitor-General.
Judge Robinson’s long-standing experience in UN affairs dates back to 1972, when he became Jamaica’s Representative to the Sixth (Legal) Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, a position that he held for 26 years. He played a leadership role on several items in the Committee, including the definition of aggression and the draft statute for an international criminal court. From 1981 to 1998, he led Jamaica’s delegations for the negotiation of treaties on several subjects, including extradition, mutual legal assistance, maritime delimitation and investment promotion and protection.
Judge Robinson has been a member of numerous international bodies. As a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights from 1988 to 1995, and its Chairman in 1991, he contributed to the development of a corpus of human rights laws for the Inter-American System. As a member of the International Law Commission from 1991 to 1996, he served on the Working Group that elaborated the draft statute for an international criminal court. Judge Robinson also served as a member of the Haiti Truth and Justice Commission from 1995 to 1996, was a member of the International Bio-ethics Committee of UNESCO from 1996 to 2005, serving as its Vice-Chairman from 2002 to 2005, and represented Jamaica at the United Nations Commission on Transnational Corporations (UNCTAD), serving as its Chairman at its 12th Session in 1986. He represented Jamaica at all sessions of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and was accredited as an ambassador to that conference in 1982.
As a judge of the Tribunal, prior to assuming his duties as President, Judge Robinson served in Trial Chamber III, where he presided over numerous cases, including those of Slobodan Milošević and Dragomir Milošević. In addition, he was assigned to sit on the Appeals Chamber in several cases, including the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the Seromba case. As of January 2010, Judge Robinson presides over the appeal trial of Boškoski and Tarculovski, as well as the appeal trial of Haradinaj et al.
Judge Robinson is a Barrister of Law, Middle Temple, United Kingdom. He holds a B.A. in English, Latin, and Economics from University College of the West Indies (London), an LLB with honours from London University, and an LL.M. in International Law from King’s College, University of London, in the areas of the Law of the Sea, the Law of the Air, Treaties, and Armed Conflict. He also holds a Certificate of International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law.
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