Speaker details

Biography

James Hamilton was Director of Public Prosecutions of Ireland (head of the Irish prosecution service) from 1999 to 2011. Before that he was a legal adviser in the Office of the Attorney General for 18 years, the last 4 1/2 of them as permanent head of office. This covered the period of negotiation and signing of the British/Irish Agreement (also known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement) with which he was actively involved. His principal areas of interest are the Rule of Law, Human Rights, Public Law, Judicial and Prosecutorial Systems, Constitutional Justice, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice and Anti-Corruption. Current and recent activities Since his retirement as Director of Public Prosecutions in 2011 James Hamilton has worked as an independent consultant with a focus on issues of the rule of law, public law, judicial and prosecutorial systems, constitutional justice, criminal justice law, and anti-corruption. Apart from his extensive experience in public prosecutions and government legal advisory work, he has considerable international experience. He was the Irish member or substitute member of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission from 1998 to 2014 for whom he acted as rapporteur on many opinions and reports. These include general reports on the independence of the prosecution service (2010) and on parliamentary immunities (2014), an amicus curiae opinion on the immunity of judges in Moldova (2013), opinions on the laws on judicial and prose-cutorial councils in Serbia (2011) and Bosnia (2014), on the laws on the prosecutors offices in Serbia (2013), Hungary (2012), Russia (2005), Montenegro (2015) Albania (2016) and Ukraine (on numerous occasions between 2001 and 2012), the law on the judiciary in Armenia (2014), Bulgaria (2010), Georgia (2013), Moldova (2014) Monte-negro (2013) and Ukraine (on numerous occasions most recently in 2015), political parties in Moldova (2013), Russia (2012), and Azerbaijan (2011), the law on occupied territories in Georgia (2009), the Constitutions of Montenegro (2013) and Romania (2014), miscarriages of justice in Georgia (2013), the amnesty of political prisoners in Georgia (2013), the courts of Bosnia (2013) and Georgia (2013), the law on the judicial system and status of judges in Kyrgyzstan (2011), and the draft law on anti-corruption courts in Ukraine (2017). He has reported as an expert for the European Union on anti-corruption issues and criminal justice systems in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Turkey and undertook six annual missions for the European Commission in connection with the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, a system of EU post-accession monitoring, in Romania between 2012 and 2015 and in Bulgaria in 2012 and 2016 on which he reported in writing to the Commission. He was a member of the European Commission's Senior Experts Group which reported on the Macedonian Wiretapping Scandal in June 2015 (the Priebe Report) and wrote a fol-low-up report in September 2017. He has recently (2014-17) participated in Council of Europe missions in Ukraine (one concerning the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code and ongoing work concerning the reform of the prosecution service), Moldova (reform of the prosecutor’s office and corruption risks in that office and in the judicial system (2017)), as well as in Kosovo which is still ongoing (Peck II)(2017 and 2018) and in Serbia (risk assessment with regard to corruption in the judiciary and prosecution). Appointed an Irish expert on the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) to take part in peer assessment reviews, he has recently been a part of the GRECO team for the fourth-round evaluation of Spain (2014) and Montenegro (2015). In 2012 he carried out a peer assessment review in Greece for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the Foreign Bribery Convention. His current professional legal activities include being a member of the EU Commission’s Group of Experts on Corruption since 2011, to which he was re-appointed in 2016. Since 2012 he has been an independent adviser to the First Minister of Scotland on the Scottish Ministerial Code and was re-appointed in 2015 by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. He was appointed to a corresponding role in Wales in 2017 and in April 2018 completed an inquiry in that capacity into allegations that the First Minister of Wales had breached the Welsh Ministerial Code. He completed a three-year term as President of the International Association of Prosecutors in October 2013, and is currently a member of the executive committee of that Association.