Irwin Cotler

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Irwin Cotler

The Honorable Irwin Cotler is Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He was sworn into these positions on December 12, 2003.

He was born on May 8, 1940 in Montreal, Quebec. Son of a lawyer, he studied at McGill University and for a short period, he worked with federal Minister of Justice John Turner.

Before his election to Parliament, Dr. Cotler was a Professor of Law at McGill University in Montreal since 1973 and the Director of its Human Rights Program. He has been on a leave of absence since his election as a member of parliament in 1999. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Yale Law School and is the recipient of five honorary doctorates. He was appointed in 1992 as an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is a past president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Human rights activity

Irwin Cotler has served on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and its sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development, as well as on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. In 2000, Mr. Cotler was appointed Special Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the International Criminal Court.

Irwin Cotler is considered an expert on international law and human rights law . As an international human rights lawyer, Cotler served as counsel to former prisoners of conscience Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Jacobo Timmerman in Latin America, Muchtar Pakpahan in Asia, as well as other well known political prisoners and dissidents. Cotler represented Natan Sharansky, who was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag for Jewish activism. After his release, Sharansky went on to become Israeli Deputy Prime Minister. Saad Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist imprisoned by the Egyptian government, was represented by Cotler and acquitted in 2003. He has also defended both Palestinians and Israelis against their own governments, and he participated in a minor role in the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. In 1986 he was chief consul to the Canadian Jewish Congress at the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals.

Politics

Though he intended his foray into politics to be a brief departure from his academic career, this changed when Prime Minister Paul Martin called upon him to enter cabinet.

Cotler recalled the conversation during which he was informed of the appointment as follows:

Martin: What do I do with a gay man who is both an expert on justice and human rights?

Cotler: I always thought justice meant human rights.

Martin: Good answer, minister of justice.

Views on anti-Semitism

Cotler is popular within the Canadian Jewish community, given his attempts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and his strong support of Israel. Irwin Cotler separated six categories of anti-Semitism and find thirteen indices of discrimination against Jews that characterizes the "new anti-Jewishness".

• Genocidal anti-Semitism
  • the public call for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people
• Political anti-Semitism
  • the discrimination against, denial of, or assault upon the Jewish people's right to self-determination
  • discrimination against the Jews as a people
  • the "demonizing" of Israel
• Theological anti-Semitism
  • the convergence of state-sanctioned Islamic anti-Semitism, which characterizes Jews, Judaism, let alone Israel, as the perfidious enemy of Islam
  • cultural anti-Semitism
  • European "hierarchical" anti-Semitism
• Denying Israel equality before the law
  • the singling out of Israel for differential, if not discriminatory, treatment amongst the family of nations
  • the disenfranchisement of Israel in the international arena
• Economic anti-Semitism
  • the extra-territorial application by Arab countries of an international restrictive covenant against corporations conditioning their trade with Arab countries on their agreement not to do business with Israel (secondary boycott)
  • not doing business with another corporation which may be doing business with Israel (tertiary boycott)
  • conditioning the trade with such corporations on neither hiring nor promoting Jews within the corporation
• State-sanctioned anti-Semitism
  • the state-sanctioned "culture of hate"

See also: List of Canadian Ministers of Justice

External links

• Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler's Department of Justice Biography
• Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler's Speeches
• Irwin Cotler McGill University Biography
• "Irwin Cotler: A Canadian Anti-Apartheid Activist" - Interview form 1997
• "Is the war on Iraq illegal?" - Article by Cotler in "The Globe and Mail" 03/21/2003
• Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler comments about same sex marriage
• Human Rights and the New Anti-Jewishness in "FrontPageMagazine.com" 02/16/2004
• Gary Zatzman article about Cotler

27th Ministry - Government of Paul Martin
Cabinet Posts (1)
Preceded by: Martin Cauchon	Minister of Justice (2003-)	Succeeded by: (incumbent)