Semester in The Hague
Real-world opportunities are a crucial part of the law school experience. These opportunities represent a chance for students to gain valuable experience in areas of the law that interest them. For Michael Connolly (L ’15), the real world waited outside of the borders of Richmond, and even the United States as a whole. His experience would take place in The Hague, home to the government of The Netherlands, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court. There, he interned with a defense team at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Connolly’s experience in The Netherlands was intense, and wasn’t limited to just the ICTY. He spent a full semester abroad, studying at Leiden University as a full-time student, while interning part time with the defense team. Spending a semester abroad at Leiden was no coincidence. “I specifically chose it based on its proximity to The Hague,” Connolly said. “I have an interest in international law, and The Hague is one of the centers of international law and human rights enforcement.” Once his semester at Leiden was secured, Connolly was able to begin working on getting his internship. Here, some Richmond connections helped pave the way. “The Office of International Education put me in contact with an alumnus who practices international law,” Connolly explained. “I told him what I was interested in, and he put me in contact with someone he knew at the ICTY. I was then interviewed by a head legal assistant who ultimately offered me an intern position on her defense team.”
This internship represented an opportunity that Connolly had been hoping to have for many years. “I had always read about these issues of genocide and war crimes,” recalled Connolly. “Even before arriving at law school I was interested in working in an international tribunal and seeing firsthand how the judicial process played out in these types of cases. It was also fascinating to compare the structure and challenges of those procedures with the U.S. system that I’ve learned about in law school.”
For Connolly, the draw of international law and human rights comes in large part from the magnitude of the cases. “War crimes are really the ultimate crime,” he said. “These cases are aimed at heads of state, and the leaders who are supposed to have the utmost responsibility for protecting their citizens. It’s also interesting to think that years ago there wasn’t really a system in which to prosecute these crimes. We had the Nuremberg trials, and then almost fifty years the UN established the ICTY to prosecute war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and created a framework for other international criminal tribunals, to hold those accountable for these egregious acts. If it weren’t for some of the legal precedents set in the ICTY, there might not be an International Criminal Court (ICC) today.”
The structure of a war crimes trial took some getting used to. Connolly described “how long the investigation takes and how long the defense’s case takes to build. The prosecution will go first and present their case for several years, after which there will be a break of several months. The defense will then put on their case for a year or so. These are fact intensive cases which are quite time consuming, as the trials consist of years of witness testimony and thousands of exhibits.”
The passage of time in these cases presented several unique challenges in the tribunal procedure. The first challenge came from the duration of the alleged crimes, and the amount of evidence needed to prove the case. “There’s so much information involved, and you have to fact check all of these allegations, and put forward proof for every single incident that happened over an entire war period,” Connolly explained. “It takes an extremely long time, particularly going over thousands upon thousands of documents, most of which have to be translated from Serbian into English, and reviewing witness statements and case transcripts for potential leads and helpful information.”
Another challenge involved the length of time that has elapsed since the crimes were committed, most of which began over twenty years ago. “With these enormous cases, there are always gaps in the evidence,” Connolly said. “Particularly with [former Serbian President Slobodan] Milosevic’s death. Without a final decision, these later defendants go to trial without being able to refer to a judgment on Milosevic’s level of involvement. Also, I was there in 2014, and we were dealing with events that happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which sometimes meant reading decades old witness testimony from individuals that have now died, or were just small children at the time. There are a lot of problems with this type of evidence for both the defense and prosecution; primarily, how can you test the veracity of it?”
Connolly’s experience at the ICTY involved more than just research for the proceedings. “One of the highlights of the internship was when I was able to observe trial while one of our important witnesses testified, and also see how counsel presented and later tendered crucial exhibits to the court,” he recalled. Ultimately, Connolly feels very fortunate to have had the experience he did. “It was a privilege, and I am so grateful,” he recalled. “Richmond really helped me out in securing this internship and great opportunity. Every day, I felt lucky to take my twenty minute commute on the tram and walk into the court.