Henry King: Ian Holloway.

• Author: Holloway, Ian
• Position: A Tribute to Henry King - Testimonial

In his work, The Poet at the Breakfast Table, the great poet and scholar of medicine, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. said that "it is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." (1) For all of us who are interested in the rule of law, it was our privilege----our very great privilege--to have been able to listen and learn from Henry King for so long.

It is now more than six decades since he first emerged on the stage of international jurisprudence in the rubble of Nuremburg, and through his life's work since, we have been the beneficiaries of a wealth of knowledge which has not only taught us much about the rule of law, but also much about ourselves and about our societies.

Henry King was a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and he began his working life in the conventional private practice of law in New York City. But it was in Nuremburg that his life--as he put it himself--was given a moral focus. Fortunate, indeed, we are that this was the case, for from our perspective, it is no exaggeration to say that Professor King's work in Nuremburg in 1946 and 1947 represented a significant contribution to our present-day understanding of international human rights law. The link, which he helped to draw in his prosecution of Field Marshal Milch, between economic exploitation and the violation of human rights norms, represented a major breakthrough in our understanding of the notion of responsibility--and culpability--for human rights abuse.

In this sense, Henry King's great service as a comparative lawyer was to remind us that the rule of law is not a monolith. Nor does it wear nationalistic clothing. It is neither American nor the preserve of the English-speaking common-law world. On the contrary, it represents the collective aspiration of humanitarian-minded people everywhere for a means of living in peace and harmony.

It was in...