Robbie

Christine Jennings

Description

Robbie Jennings came from Idle, an industrial village in Yorkshire; but he was never an idle man. His career was a 'story of the unforeseeable, even improbable, advance to high position and worldwide reputation of a straightforward man of simple origins' (from his entry in the ODNB by Sir Franklin Berman). Robbie achieved this eminence through academic success, experience abroad, service in military intelligence, years of teaching at Cambridge and the Inns of Court, and as counsel in major international border disputes. Included in this book are many passages of his own writings: his entertaining and perceptive observations on his travels, and many comments on legal problems. He is remembered by former pupils and colleagues from around the world for his wisdom, humanity and humour. His private passions were for the Lake District, for music, cricket and animals; and above all, for his family.Written by Robbie's wife and close companion for half a century, this book provides for the general reader some idea of the scope and effectiveness of international law, with Robbie's own comments on its continuous development.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Condado de Yorkshire (Reino Unido)
• Túnez
• Argentina
• Tunisia
• Yorkshire
• Cambridge
• Tunisie
• Argentine

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 03 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838599720
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 Christine Jennings

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781838599720

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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For our children and grandchildren,
&
the multitude of
Robbie’s former pupils and friends

In his book on ‘ The International Court of Justice (1946-1996 )’, the Librarian (Arthur Eyffinger) wrote: ‘few judges carried their knowledge and wisdom, that rich harvest of a lifetime, so lightly and with such comfort and ease’. He was writing, of course, of Sir Robert Jennings … who felt no need to impress, never sought to impose his ideas: Sir Robert was content quietly to be as he was. And yet his qualities were such that he was famous the world over and received every conceivable accolade.
More than most, his life was ‘all of a piece’. The Robbie Jennings who allowed himself to be button-holed by a thrilled student was the same Robbie Jennings who dined with the Queen of the Netherlands … He never felt the need to choose between the world he came from – the unpretentious world of mills, manufacturing and Methodism in Yorkshire – and the decidedly grand world stage on which he came to be seen as an influential player. It all sat comfortably together, and he liked it all.
Extract from the address given by HE Dame Rosalyn Higgins at the Memorial Service for Sir Robert Jennings in Great St Mary’s Church. Cambridge, 11 December 2004
Contents
1. Origins & Childhood 1913-32
2. Downing 1932-36
3. A Year at Harvard 1936-37
4. Cambridge and the L.S.E. 1937-39
5. Jesus College 1939-40
6. Military Service 1940-46
7. Back to Jesus College, Cambridge
8. Marriage and the Whewell Chair 1955-1956
9. Work and Family Both Increase 1957-58
10. More Developments
11. Grantchester June 1961–December 1962
12. Work and Family 1963-65
13. Argentina-Chile Frontier Case: ‘Rio Encuentro’ 1965-66
14. The Hague Academy General Course 1967
15. Beagle Channel and Jersey 1968
16. Advancement 1969-70
17. Arment House: A Dream Fulfilled 1971
18. All Manner of Experiences
19. Ever More Diverse 1973
20. Legal Practice Increases 1973-74
21. Work Proliferates 1975-76
22. Yet More Cases 1977
23. The Trendy Professor 1978-81
24. Final Academic Year 1980-81
25. H.E. Judge Sir Robert Jennings 1982-83
26. Not Just a Judge 1983
27. Residence in The Hague 1984
28. The Work of the Court
29. Either Side of the North Sea 1985
30. A Spreading Reputation 1986-87
31. Still Busy 1988-89
32. And Still More 1989-1990
33. President of the International Court 1991
34. Second Year as President 1992-93
35. Oppenheim
36. Final year as President of the ICJ 1993
37. Still at the Court 1994-1995
38. … But Not Quite Retired 1995-96
39. The Arbitrator & Collected Writings 1997-99
40. The Final Years 2000-2004
41. After
RYJ’s Published Writings
Notes
Origins & Childhood 1913-32
Robert Yewdall Jennings was born on 19 th October 1913 at Idle, near Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a place whose character was essential in forming his own. There, as a toddler watching eggs in an incubator crack open to release chicks that dried out, cheeping, he made his first coherent comment: ‘Flooffy little booggers, aren’t they?’
Idle was an industrial village in the Airedale valley, its rows of stone cottages blackened with soot from the chimneys of big woollen mills. His home, Hawthorn Cottage, was uphill on Highfield Road and had its own small field behind, with a splendid view across the valley to the countryside around. Over the previous century or so the village had grown and was now at the height of its busyness and prosperity. Most of the community worked in the woollen industry, yet there were still a few small farms, and nearby was Idle Moor. A Wesleyan Methodist chapel provided most of the Jennings’s social life.
Robbie’s father, Arthur Jennings, was the middle child of a family of nine; his mother, Edith (née Brotherton), was second in a family of five. A piece written by Robbie to amuse our own children gives a flavour of those two strands of his inheritance, first describing Grandpa Jennings, who lived in Eccleshill, a slight but significant distance from Idle itself. Tea at that household began with Grandpa Jennings ‘– slight, beady eyes and grey pointed beard –‘rapping the table for grace. The meal was austere, the conversation sometimes interesting but terminated by one of the sons being required “to return thanks”’. Afterwards, there might be music in the parlour, with the uncles and aunts singing around the piano. Finally, there would be a bible-reading and prayers by the paterfamilias.
‘Looking back [Robbie wrote] I can see that Grandpa Jennings was a good, gentle if puritanical soul, who, with the help of chapel, somehow managed, in spite of real poverty, to earn and protect a great degree of respectability for his very large family. But he meant little to me, I’m afraid. It never occurred to me ask whether I liked him or not. The question didn’t arise.
‘Now Grandpa [Brotherton] was another thing altogether. Again rather small, but with a biggish bald head, blue kind and stupid eyes, and a ginger moustache, he always wore a country-type tweed suit which had once been some sort of dark green check. I cannot remember that he had any other garment. To go out for a walk he would add an old, shapeless hat of the same sort of tweed, with a feather stuck in the band, brown leather leggings over his heavy boots, and an ash walking stick which he called for some reason an “ash-plant”…’
Set down in longhand on a wet holiday in Eskdale sometime in the late 1970s, this description was part of an affectionate and whimsical tale about that Grandpa’s pride in his small flock of hens, kept on the Hawthorn Cottage small field in rivalry to Robbie’s own cluster of Leghorns.
The two sides of his family were clearly different. The more stuffy-seeming Jenningses were staunch Methodists and proud of the part they had played in the development of the local Wesleyan chapels. Grandpa Jennings died when Robbie was only ten, and his wife just three years later. An obituary in the local newspaper describes Thomas Yewdall Jennings as an Eccleshill Wesleyan Stalwart, one who ‘for 49 years laboured assiduously for the good of the Sunday School’. (One has to recognize the importance of the Sunday School in the Methodist churches at that time and the influence of its Superintendent.) Moreover, while Mr Jennings ‘was a zealous Wesleyan, there was nothing narrow in his sympathies, for he took a lively interest in noble causes outside the scope of his own church’ – the local Free Church Council, the National Children’s Home and Orphanage, the Liberal Club and so on. For a man whose wage as a Warehouse Manager would have been modest, there was no room for luxuries at home.
Grandma Jennings had been born Annie Harland, and her family, too, were staunch Methodists – they could, indeed, claim descent from a John Harland who had been a contemporary and friend of John Wesley. Her grandfather had run a prosperous painting and decorating firm, and her father followed in that trade.
The worthy Thomas Yewdall Jennings himself was the son of a handloom weaver, John Jennings, noted for the excellent white flannel he produced. This would have been a solitary business carried out on the top floor of one of those high terrace cottages on the Long Row, with a good light from large windows. As the years went by, such work was taken over by the mills. John Jennings’ wife was Betty Yewdall, herself daughter of a ‘clothier’, George Yewdall. Both had signed their marriage certificate with an ‘X’, as had their parents. But though Betty was illiterate, the Yewdall 1 family commanded respect in the local community. A chapter in the small book by Wright Watson, Wesleyan Methodism in Idle , begins:
‘Of all the families connected with local Methodism there is not one which claims so high a place as that of the Yewdalls. . . the name can be traced back for nearly four hundred years in the annals of Idle township’ 2 . [Later he tells how] ‘The third preaching house erected in the Bradford district’ was provided at Eccleshill in 1775, ‘largely due to the labours of two of the members, Zachariah and Thomas Yewdall’, and a few months later ‘Mr [John]Wesley paid a visit to Eccleshill and preached in the new chapel, “to a people”, he says, “just sprung out of the dust, exceeding artless, and exceeding earnest; many of whom seemed to be already saved from sin…”’
By 1781 the Eccleshill congregation of Methodists numbered 105, while at Idle there were just 33. But presently more chapels were built, each representing a mighty effort of fund-raising by folk who had little to spare. A family recollection is of
‘… a big Family Pew with a door on at Eccleshill Methodist Chapel and Gr