The Trials of Richard Goldstone

In June 2009, Richard Goldstone was a global hero, honored by the MacArthur Foundation for its prize in international justice. Four months later, he was called a “quisling” and compared to some of the worst traitors in human history. Why? Because this champion of human rights and international law chose to apply his commitments to fairness and truth to his own community.

The Trials of Richard Goldstone tells the story of this extraordinary individual and the price he paid for his convictions. It describes how Goldstone, working as a judge in apartheid South Africa, helped to undermine this unjust system and later, at Nelson Mandela’s request, led a commission that investigated cases of racial violence and intimidation. It also considers the international renown he received as the chief United Nations prosecutor for war crimes committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the first tribunals to try political and military leaders on charges of genocide. Finally, it explores how Goldstone became a controversial figure in the wake of the Jewish jurist’s powerful, but flawed, investigation of Israel for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Richard Goldstone’s dramatic life story reveals that even in a world rife with prejudice, nationalism, and contempt for human rights, one courageous man can advance the cause of justice.

DANIEL TERRIS is dean of the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. He is also director emeritus of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and a visiting professor of the humanities at Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York. He is the author of Ethics at Work: Creating Virtue in an American Corporation and coauthor of The International Judge: An Introduction to the Men and Women Who Decide the World’s Cases.

— Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright

— Publishers Weekly

— Jerusalem Post

— Brandeis Now

— Michael Ignatieff, President, Central European University

— The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

— Sunday Times

— Hans Corell, Former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations

— The Independent

— Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

— The Muslim Times

— William Schabas, author of Introduction to the International Criminal Court