Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

“Law must be taught in primary school, it is a social science.  We must demystify the law, as it stands many people do not understand the law.”

“Peace starts With Access to information”

Questions: How did this process effect you personally?

Batya Friedman: The project is draining, I have to sleep 10 hours a day, but it makes me happy to be able to contribute.

Don Horowitz: It was a great experience and it was a saddening experience. The process has been draining.

John Makay: standing on  a memorial for 250,o00 thousand dead I just wanted to be alone away from people.

Question: How will these be used?

Patricia Boiko: We want to make the material available for remix and mash up.  (Brian: need to talk to them about licensing and see how serious they are about this)

Questions: Why did we only use caucasions ?

Patricia Boiko: It was not intentional it was a product of

Question: do we (the UN) have a right to run the tribunal if we ignored the genocide at the time

Ron Slye: The perfect is often the enemy of the good.  The UN failed to act at the time of the Genocide.  The US made a mistake as did the UN by not intervening.  But this does not mean that we should not try to help now.

Question: What can we do now in Rwanda, Darfur and the Congo?

Don Horowitz: We need to get this information out in more ways then online, through cell phones and flyers to start dialogues. Education is the key but the answer is not clear.

Max Andrews: Much of the issues are tied to extreme povery and a lack of education.  We must address the underling issues.  We need real comperhensive education in Africa.

Question: What about Darfur and Congo?

Batya Freidman: We ahve the potential to evolve as a society.  We are at a point where we can change.  One of the great gift of this tribunal is rape as genocide, it allows us to start conversations about issues that have been unspeakable and unaddressed in the past.  These changes take years.

Closing remarks:

Don Horowitz: We need to use this work to impove future tribunals

Bayta Freidman: Next steps:

Never again Rwanda we want to put these materials in the hands of youth to create videos to use in discussion groups.

We also want to make these videos accessible to legal community.

We need to also make this available to the people, we want the only limits to be the human imagination.   We are only asking for knowledge about how it is used.

Justice and reconciliation do not go together.  Criminal prosecutions relive the most horrific moments of the Genocide.  Another process is need to move forward. (I will look into which interview brought this up once they are posted online.  The interview clips are passing so quickly with so much to talk about)

Brian: This shows how much work is still needed after the tribunals.

Innocent until proven guilty, is a basic human right. At the end of the day some of the people brought up on charges were found not guilty.

When speaking on why treat those who commit genocide with respect and a comfortable prison the answer brought a reactions from the crowd “We are treating them better and that is what gives us the right the judge them” – Max Andrews. I think what he meant is that we must treat them with human rights and dignity even when judging or we are committing crimes our self.

Legal systems exist to enable other systems to deliver basic human rights – Don Horowitz:

Access is key to this project not just access to the first world but also access to the people in Rwanda and to the rest of the world – Batya Friedman

After opening remarks we viewed a short clip from a one of the early UN investigators followed by a discussion of the multiple interperations and communities can .  10,000 people a day died in the 1994 genocide, ending with a total of nearly 800,00 deaths.  The genocide also created an enormity refugee problem.

Next there was short clip from Washington Supreme Court Justice Robert Utter disscussing the impact on international law.

A little more about the project 10 people from the Seattle legal and academic community left in September and spent 4 weeks in Rwanda collecting 70 to 80 hours of interviews.  49 interview were conducted during these weeks.  They started the interviews with 3 questions Where where you in 1994? When and how did you hear about the genocide?  When did you chose to join the Genocide Tribunal?

This was the first Genocide tribunal to recognize rape as a form of genocide.  Unfortunately with limited resources the crime of rape was the first charge that was dropped.

The nest set of clips brought up a very difficult problem, one of the witness a lawyer was working with ran into a tough ethical and professional issue problem:

Lawyer: are you ready to go forward and testiy?

Witness: I have one problem?

Lawyer: What is the problem?

Witness: I never told my husband I was raped.

Lawyer: Why did you not tell your husband?

Witness: If I told my husband I would not have a husband.

How do you deal with this ethical issue, do you risk her family and home to prosecute genocide?

“Judges don’t give blessings they need blessing to do justice” – Don Horowitz

One of the the interviews, with an Assistant UN General, pointed out that lots of resources have been spent on the criminals but very few resources have been spent on the victims. Furthermore our mission is not complete until we help the victims.

Note: The “s are paraphrase for main points not exact quotes

Kane Hall @ the University of Washington is nearly full, my rough guess is that there are 370 people present.  The event is also being broadcast on UW TV (Windows media player is need I hope thre is a linux and Mac compatible alternative).

The website for the event and the project over all is TribunalVoices.org (but the website is not up yet).

It is nice to see the school reaching out to online communities, the next step is to populate the page with student generated content to move into Web 2.0. Here is the full press release:

To be effective as lawyers in the service of justice requires that we understand both legal theory and how our actions will be received in the real world. To be effective as a law school also requires that same real-world context. As the world changes around us, we must change with it — or risk becoming irrelevant.

So today we’re launching a Facebook page as a way to keep in touch with students, alumni and colleagues. You’ll be able to find out at a glance about many of the things that are happening around the law school, see photos or video of law school events and connect directly with other friends of the law school.

Please become a fan of our page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Seattle-WA/Seattle-University-School-of-Law/51348305898

The shirt reminds me of a tag cloud:

Design by Evan Hwang (if even has a web site send me a link to add)

If you are interested in a T-Shirt fill out the survey (don’t worry, it’s just one question!):

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/iuga/68319

The ISchool and Seattle University School of Law are sponsoring a talk about the Rwanda Genocide Tribunal. Here is the event info:

“Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal: Genocide and Justice”
Date: Tuesday, January 27
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Location: Kane Hall, Room 120 ,University of Washington
Cost: FREE!

To register, visit: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/lhatfiel/66846 or call Natalie Michael at 206-543-4794.

Recent events in Congo, Darfur and Somalia underscore the persistence of genocide as a political, legal, ethical and humanitarian problem. In 1994, the Rwandan genocide lasted only 100 days but left more than 800,000 dead, a rate of killing far higher than any other previous genocide. In response to the Rwandan genocide, the United Nations in 1994 created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The presentation will be given by University of Washington Information School Professor Batya Friedman and a team of experts from Seattle University School of Law and UW. “Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal” is part of a UW multi-lifespan research initiative intended to help future generations understand and learn from the Rwanda genocide, develop an improved system of international justice, and contribute to a process of healing and peace. A series of compelling videos will give voice to the judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, administrators, interpreters, investigators, jailers, psychologist and others associated with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Last fall, Friedman and former Superior Court Judge Donald Horowitz led a team of information scientists, legal experts and award-winning cinematographers to Rwanda and Tanzania. The team, which included former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Utter; former U.S. Attorney and Seattle University School of Law Professor from Practice John McKay and SU Law Professor Ron Slye, conducted 49 in-depth video interviews with participants in the tribunal. For the first time ever, both the professional and personal experiences of lawyers, judges and others directly involved with such a court or tribunal have been brought together, collected, and preserved. That didn’t happen at Nuremberg on in Cambodia or South Africa. These materials will be made fully available to the public in Rwanda, throughout Africa, and the rest of the world.

I will likely be in attendance and live blogging.

I am curious how many of the members have a NPO focus and if there is much overlap with the NTEN community. No mention of open source or open access will see how locked into the legacy closed systems the community is or if there is some movement to more access and community projects.

Here is a little on it:

Legal IT Professionals is a group for everybody interested in legal technology: Chief Information Officers (CIO), IT directors, Enterprise Architects, Project Managers, Litigation Support Professionals, Helpdesk Employees (User Support), Messaging Experts, ITIL specialists, legal IT Training Experts, Security-, Network-, and Infrastructure experts, Database Administrators, CRM and PMS experts, Web developers, SharePoint gurus, Knowledge Management specialists, Docketing Managers, in short all ICT functions present in law firms. We also welcome employees from legal software manufacturers (like Elite, Aderant, Interwoven, Lexis Nexis), employees from legal technology consultancy agencies, legal IT recruiters and staffing firms.