Gerald Gray Fitzmaurice

Background

Gerald Gray Fitzmaurice was born on 24 October 1901 in Storrington, a village in West Sussex, England. He was a son of Vice-Admiral Sir Maurice Swynfen Fitzmaurice and Mabel Gertrude Gray.

He came of age in the interwar years, when the League of Nations and its Permanent Court of International Justice were developing the machinery of international law. His later career was devoted largely to the international judicial institutions that followed this period.

Education

Fitzmaurice attended Malvern College, a public school founded in 1865 in Malvern, Worcestershire. The college opened in January 1865 with twenty-four boys and was originally a school for boys aged nine to eighteen, becoming coeducational only in 1992.

He then studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained a Bachelor of Laws in 1922. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, the college was refounded in 1557 by John Caius, and while there Fitzmaurice was a pupil of Arnold McNair, the later Baron McNair.

Career

Fitzmaurice became a Barrister-at-Law at Gray's Inn in 1925. Gray's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London, the bodies through which barristers in England and Wales are called to the bar. He worked for the Foreign Service from 1929.

During the Second World War he was a legal adviser to the Ministry of Economic Warfare from 1939 to 1943. He later spent time as Second Legal Advisor from 1945 until 1953, and in 1946 he was part of the United Kingdom's delegation to the United Nations Assembly.

In 1948 he began a period as British counsel to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The Court succeeded the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations in 1946 as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, and it sat in the Peace Palace. From 1953 to 1960 he served as Senior Legal Advisor to the Court.

He was a member of the International Law Commission from 1955 to 1960. The Commission was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 to promote the codification and progressive development of international law.

In 1960 he left the Court's legal advisory post to become a judge of the International Court of Justice, completing the term of Hersch Lauterpacht, who had died in office. He was re-elected for a full term in 1963 and served on the Court until 1973.

He then sat on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg from 1974 until 1982. The Court was established in 1959 under the European Convention on Human Rights, which had entered into force in 1953.

Works

More photos

• handbook

  • A Diplomat's Handbook of International Law and Practice

    (Written by Biswanath Sen and edited by Fitzmaurice, who a...)

    1965

• legal treatise

  • The Law and Procedure of the International Court of Justice

    (A two-volume treatise on the law and procedure of the Int...)

    1986

Membership

Fitzmaurice was a member of the Institut de Droit International, a scholarly body founded in 1873 in Ghent to advance the study and codification of international law, and he served as its president. Its membership brought together legal scholars and practitioners from many countries.

He was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration from 1964 to 1973. The court was established at the 1899 Hague Peace Conference and provides arbitration for disputes between states and other parties.

He was also a member of the Grotius Society, a London-based body founded in 1915 for the study of international law and named after the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius.

• Served as president of the institute.

  Institut de Droit International

  1948

• Permanent Court of Arbitration

  1964 - 1973

• Grotius Society

Connections

Fitzmaurice married Alice Evelina Alexandra Sandberg, daughter of Christer Peter Sandberg, on 15 September 1933. The couple had two sons, James Alexander Swynfen Fitzmaurice and Maurice Evelyn Forbes Fitzmaurice.

His parents were Vice-Admiral Sir Maurice Swynfen Fitzmaurice and Mabel Gertrude Gray. Alice Sandberg died in 1964 is not documented here, so no further details of the marriage are recorded.

Father:

Maurice Swynfen Fitzmaurice

Held the rank of vice-admiral.

Mother:

Mabel Gertrude Gray

Wife:

Alice Evelina Alexandra Sandberg

Daughter of Christer Peter Sandberg.

Son:

James Alexander Swynfen Fitzmaurice

Son:

Maurice Evelyn Forbes Fitzmaurice

References

• Judge Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice and the Discipline of International Law: Opinions on the International Court of Justice, 1961-1973 A study by J. G. Merrills of Fitzmaurice's opinions as a judge of the International Court of Justice during 1961 to 1973.
  1998
• Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice A memorial address by Manfred Lachs, judge and former president of the International Court of Justice, delivered at a memorial service in London on 26 November 1982.
• Gerald Grey Fitzmaurice papers, 1939-1971 The papers of the New York Public Library's Patricia Cornwell collection document his legal work from the Ministry of Economic Warfare through his service with the United Nations, mainly through correspondence and memoranda.
• Gerald Fitzmaurice An encyclopedia entry summarizing his judicial posts, honours and family background.