Birth: 6/8/1938 Death:10/6/2014
Born in Jerusalem on 6 Aug. 1938 to a family originally from the city of Acre (his father Michel was the Registrar of the Judiciary at the time of the British Mandate); attended the College des Frères in Jerusalem; immigrated with his family to Egypt in 1948; received British education at the Victoria College in Alexandria, 1948-54; went to Britain and studied Law at Leeds (LLB and LLM, 1955-62), then International Relations at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (Diploma, 1959); was called to the English Bar by Lincoln’s Inn and joined the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London the same year, first as a research officer (1960-63), then as lecturer (until 1977); seconded to the Government of Kenya to carry out a Restatement of African Law (1961-63) and to be Secretary and member of the Commissions on the Law of Marriage and Divorce and the Law of Succession (1967-68); received an LLD from the University of London in 1971 in respect of his work on African law; was naturalized as a British citizen; appointed to be a High Court Judge in Kenya in 1977 (until 1982); returned to his practice at the London Bar in 1982, focusing on Commonwealth Law, Immigration and International Commercial Arbitration; became general editor of Butterworths Immigration Law Service; member of the editorial boards of various law publications and journals; fellow of the Institute of Chartered Arbitrators; has acted as chairman or member in various Middle Eastern arbitrations; Secretary of the Pan-African Council of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA); appointed visiting Professor of Law (Africa and the Middle East) at SOAS in 1988; acted as Chairman of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) at SOAS since 1990; appointed one of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges in the UK in 1992, becoming the first Arab High Court Judge in Britain; Vice-Chairman of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) – a British charity dedicated to the health and humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people; returned to Palestine for the first time in 1990 when his uncle died; returned again in 1994 and assisted Anis Qassem in drafting a Basic Law for the PA’s interim period; board member of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens Rights (PICCR); chairman of Immigration Appeal Tribunal, England (1997); has (co-)edited and published numerous law books and articles, incl. The Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, (Kluwer, 1994-2002); The Arab-Israeli Accords: Legal Perspectives (Kluwer, 1996), The Palestinian Exodus, 1948-1998 (Ithaca Press, Reading, 1999), and The Rule of Law in the Middle East and the Islamic World: Human Rights and the Judicial Process (London, 2000). He died in London on June 10th, 2014.
