Many of us were profoundly saddened on Monday 31 May to hear of the passing of a titan – Judge James Crawford SC AC FBA* – and a mentor, colleague and friend to many. I do not wish my recollections to intrude on tributes from family or his closest friends, but I would like to add my pebble of remembrance...
[Letta Tayler is an associate director and the counterterrorism lead in the Crisis and Conflict Division of Human Rights Watch. @LettaTayler.] “Getting states to buy into international criminal law is like asking the Mafia to buy into RICO.” We were only five minutes into class and Rob Cryer, fueled by a 500-ml plastic bottle of Diet Coke, was in full swing. “States get the...
A guilty admission: I had not seen Rob in person for the past few years. He was in Birmingham; I was in Amsterdam. He wasn't traveling as much, and our paths didn't cross. I didn't even know how sick he was for a while. Rob wasn't the type to make or want people to feel sorry for him. Fortunately, Rob and...
[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University.] Rob Cryer had such bright eyes. Sometimes blue eyes can be icy, but his were never so: they always had a twinkle, a gleam of warm curiosity and delightful mischievousness. He was my friend, he was a friend to so many, and I...
[Melanie O’Brien is senior lecturer in international law at the University of Western Australia. She is mildly obsessed with RBG, because of which she is regularly asked to talk about RBG, such as at the International Women’s Day Perth public screening of On the Basis of Sex in 2019.] After her death on 18 September 2020, the whole world is mourning...