As I talk to Howard Morrison over zoom, he is currently on a remote Scottish island on a writing sabbatical and dressed casually, a stark change from the blue judicial robes of the International Criminal Court (ICC). After a nine-year stint as a judge at the ICC, he remains in the world of international law in his role as UK’s advisor to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General. Morrison has already had an illustrious career, having been involved in some important trials regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity, including cases to do with the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

He describes his introduction into international law as “sort of mundane.” After coming home from court one day he saw an advertisement in Counsel Magazine saying ‘Would you like to be on the list of counsel for the UN Yugoslav tribunal? ’ “It was literally fill in a form and post it off, so I did, and three months later, I got a phone call in hesitant German and it turned out to be a Croatian who had been convicted of war crimes and wanted a fresh lawyer for his appeal. I went off to the Hague and the UN appointed me as his defence counsel, and that’s how it started. If I hadn’t filled in that form in Counsel magazine, life might have been very different!”

“If the judges can’t keep the politics out of the courtroom, frankly, they should seek alternative employment”

Working at the ICC was a “high-level privilege” but presented challenges too. In the court a third of the judges leave every three years and are replaced by six new judges. So instead of having a uniform system, there is a need to manage the different approaches. “It’s not impossible, of course, but it does sometimes test the system.”

Certainly, recent news about Donald Trump’s sanctions on ICC’s officials over Netanyahu’s arrest warrant comes as a shock and many will wonder about the effect it will have upon the court. Morrison elaborates on this, adding “It’s hard to say at the moment, as they’ve only just been issued.” He highlights that “the problem isn’t so much the individual sanctions, although they are desperately pointless and unfair in my judgment.”

Instead, the real problem for the ICC may be a “closing down of the financial avenues for the court” as the major banks would also have to comply with American law. “How that’s going to work out? We wait to see.” Morrison stresses the “enormous amount of hypocrisy that’s going on.” “The US applauded when there was an arrest warrant for Putin, said what a good thing it was, but as soon as there was one for Hamas and Netanyahu, it suddenly became an illegitimate court. The politics are very partisan, very transparent and very damaging.”

Is there entanglement of politics with international law? Morrison’s answer is clear: “Is there any alcohol in whiskey?” But he emphasises that “If the judges can’t keep the politics out of the courtroom, frankly, they should seek alternative employment. Politics have to stop at the court door and inside the court all the judge should be concerned with is the evidence and the law and the basics of fair trial rights.”

“It’s not a job for everybody – let’s put it like that. If you let it destroy you, it will”

More recently, Morrison has been the UK independent advisor to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General since 2021, at a point when he thought he had retired but found the role “too interesting to say no to!” He has been assisting with the training of Ukrainian judges, prosecutors and investigators to enable them to understand international criminal and humanitarian law, how to try war crimes and write judgments consistent with the European Court of Human Rights. Speaking about his continuing role. he states “part of me hopes it’s not indefinite, simply because you want the war to finish, but the end of the war will not mean the end of the cases. I mean, there are over 140,000 recorded criminal cases relating to either war crimes or crimes against humanity. Many years of work ahead lie ahead.” But for the moment, he declares he “can’t see any obvious end to it. No.”

One would think that dealing with such harrowing cases would grind anyone down but Morrison provides insight into how he retains his optimism. He laughs “Well it’s difficult at times [...] I’ve spent a good chunk of the last 25 years dealing with the most horrendous cases and staring either literally or metaphorically into mass graves. And when you go to a site where there are mass graves, you can’t say that it doesn’t have a depressive effect, of course it does.”

Yet, he emphasises that allowing this to dominate would mean that “frankly you can’t do your job. It’s part of the matrix of the job. In international law that’s writ large. I saw it in the Balkans, in Rwanda and I see it now in Ukraine. It’s not a job for everybody – let’s put it like that. If you let it destroy you, it will.”

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