Derek Bowett

Professor Sir Derek William Bowett (20 April 1927-23 May 2009) was an international lawyer, appointed Whewell Professor of International Law in 1981 and was President of Queens' College, Cambridge 1970 - 1982. Bowett was awarded a CBE 1983 and was Knighted in 1998.^[1]

Raised near Manchester Bowett was a chorister at Manchester Cathedral, attended William Hulme's Grammar School and joined the Royal Navy at 18 years of age in 1945. After demobilisation he studied law at Downing College, Cambridge. After gaining a first class degree Bowett was encouraged to continue his studies by Hersch Lauterpacht the then Whewell Professor of International Law.^[2]

He was highly esteemed as a lawyer: J. P. Gardner (Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law) wrote in the Introduction to Bowett’s book International Court of Justice (1997), that his “….experience of international litigation is unrivalled…”

In 2007 he recorded a series of interviews for the Cambridge law faculty recalling his career, which are published on its website. The transcript, with its unaffected identification not only of those he respected as inspirations, but also those he regarded as lazy, poor lawyers or fools, preserves an authentic echo of the Bowett voice, immediately recognisable by those who knew him.

Sir Derek’s association with Queens’ College was long and eventful, and documented in a series of six amusing and elegantly written articles in the “Queens’ College Record” (2004[2], 2005[3], 2006[4], 2007-9[5]).

Work in Beirut: the only time Israel has appeared before an international tribunal.

He spent 1966-1968 in Beirut as Legal Adviser to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). There he experienced, from a distance, the Six Day War and, much more directly, its effects in terms of the great increase in the number of refugees falling under UNRWA’s remit. It coloured his attitude to the Middle East conflict thereafter: his rooms at Queens had on the walls photos of some of those refugees. In later years he successfully represented Egypt against Israel in a significant territorial dispute, the only time Israel has appeared before an international tribunal.

Work in Somalia

In 1964 while a Fellow of Queens' he was asked by the newly-independent Government of Somalia to advise it on its territorial disputes with Ethiopia and Kenya. This was his first international law brief. On arrival in Mogadishu he was asked to draft a diplomatic note closing the British Embassy, on the basis that Britain was refusing to give effect to a plebiscite in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, which had voted by a large majority to reunite with Somalia. Lacking experience in rupturing diplomatic relations, he asked to see the standard work, Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. But the Somali Foreign Ministry had no books of any kind, and he was told to borrow it from the British Embassy. The book was duly returned, with a note of thanks and another, more formal, note giving the Ambassador four days to leave. It seems to have been a case of persona non grata sed liber gratus.

References

1. ^ Professor Sir Derek Bowett Cambridge University, Squire Law Library
2. ^ Sir Derek Bowett: international lawyer Obituary Times Online 3. August, 2009

• Conversations with Professor Sir Derek William Bowett: a contribution to the Squire Law Library's Eminent Scholars Archive, 2008 (3) Legal Information Management, 214 - 222.

• Marjorie Millace Whiteman (1898–1986). Compiler of the Digest of International Law (1963-72: 15 volumes known as “Whiteman’s Digest”), helped draft the UN Charter 1945, and legal advisor to Eleanor Roosevelt who chaired the UN committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948.
• http://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent_scholars/derek_bowett.php
• Images of Bowett

Persondata
Name	Bowett, Derek
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1927
Place of birth
Date of death	2009
Place of death