Geoffrey Nice, British barrister, is a familiar face in the international legal world. Flamboyant, eloquent and outspoken, he became a well-known courtroom figure as lead prosecutor in the trial of the late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY. Since then, Nice has represented victims before the ICC and is now representing the government of Kenya, in relation to the ‘Ocampo 6’.

By Geraldine Coughlan, The Hague

Dressed impeccably in a light suit and signature cufflinks, he grins, tying his shoelaces as the IJT arrives to talk to him in The Hague. Peering over his laptop, Nice chats, telling me his legal hero is the ICTY’s former prosecutor Louise Arbour and his favourite quote is by Lord Erskine, on the 18th-century Thomas Paine case, who said that when a lawyer is permitted to choose his clients, “the liberties of England are at an end”.

‘Cab-rank rule’
On his various roles in the courtroom, Nice explains that it is not surprising for an English lawyer to stand at different sides of the court, as his role is to serve the interests of his client, whether prosecution, defence, victims or other parties. “English barristers have for centuries, worked on the principle that a barrister doesn’t choose his clients – his clients choose him. That means that a lawyer in the English domestic criminal system, can prosecute one day, defend the next,” he said. “It’s known as the ‘cab-rank’ rule, because it means the lawyer is there only to ensure the system functions fairly”, he added. An expression of this flexibility is to be found in the case of Thomas Paine, a ‘radical’. Lord Erskine lost an important job and the approval of society over defending his case. That sparked Erskine’s famous line. “And I think the (‘cab-rank’) principle is one that English lawyers would consider appropriate to apply to modern developing systems”, said Nice.

International courts
He said that modern international courts, because they are only partly developed, are likely to make mistakes or be vulnerable to improper pressures. The vulnerability of such courts to improper pressure, however, can be checked by the standards of independent barristers.

“In international courts, having lawyers available to represent people on all sides – prosecution, defence, victims, governments & applications, such as I’m concerned with at the moment, means that the system is served by the lawyers who ensure that it works to the best of its ability,” Nice said.

Nice or nasty
Nice dealt with the ICTY’s first prosecution of a politician, Bosnian Croat Dario Kordic, who was jailed for 25 years. He also successfully prosecuted Goran Jelic, known as the ‘Serbian Adolf’. But Nice’s top case was the landmark Milosevic trial.

“The case was interesting because whatever his underlying personality - nice or nasty, easy-going or tough – he was a politician. And because of the difficult positions in which he found himself, he made decisions – bad, worse & even worse – which at some stage, we said, became not just bad decisions politically, but became criminal decisions. You then see the progression and development of the man and his actions during the Balkans conflicts.”

Geoffrey Nice believes that today’s trials in international courtrooms provide humanity with a rich and essential legacy of historical facts.

“It’s from that, that we should learn. You could say the verdicts in these cases are a great deal less important than the record of evidence that they leave behind. A record that would never be available but for these trials that show how things happened,” he said.

“Because if we can learn from how things happen – then maybe we’ll be clever enough and sensible enough to reduce their occurrence in the future,” he concluded.

When he waved the IJT off, untying his shoelaces, Sir Geoffrey seemed to be much more than just a Mr. Nice guy.