{"id":68353,"date":"2015-12-28T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=68353"},"modified":"2016-01-01T16:08:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T16:08:11","slug":"prof-stale-eskeland-a-life-in-the-vanguard-for-peace-and-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/12\/prof-stale-eskeland-a-life-in-the-vanguard-for-peace-and-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. St\u00e5le Eskeland – A Life in the Vanguard for Peace and Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"St\u00e5le<\/a>

Prof. Dr. St\u00e5le Eskeland<\/p><\/div>\n

Oslo, December 27, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

A great Norwegian scholar for peace, justice and a sane foreign policy, St\u00e5le Eskeland, died\u00a0yesterday at age 72. He was a retired professor of (Norwegian and international) criminal law at the\u00a0University of Oslo, who never shied away from pointing out social and political wrongs. Eskeland\u00a0challenged conventional political wisdom and powerful people and institutions with great courage,\u00a0not minding career and consequences. Speaking truth to power, he still had a way of balancing warm\u00a0compassion with calm professional judgment that made him a much used commentator when\u00a0Norwegian media needed someone to interview on a wide range of legal issues.<\/p>\n

Professor Eskeland included comments on nuclear disarmament and crimes of aggression in his standard textbook on Criminal law. In 2011 he published a major study of \u00abThe Most Serious Crimes\u00bb (the crimes of aggression, genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, terror, use of weapons of mass destruction.). This book (unfortunately only in Norwegian) also included concrete and fresh examples of NATO (and Norwegian) war crimes – and as a consequence was met with resounding silence by official Norway. Eskeland will be missed as\u00a0a very needed alternative voice on peace law in the debate on Norway\u00b4s foreign policy.<\/p>\n

His main work within traditional criminal law subjects in later years was a pioneering effort to reform the evaluation of evidence. His position was that the courts and the two sides in criminal cases must show greater discipline in drawing conclusions on what has happened.<\/p>\n

Often the courts have evaluated scientific components in the \u00abchain\u00bb of evidence without sufficient background to unmask and discard flawed and untenable science. On occasions, courts have considered constellations of facts as unique and significant with no basis in proper\u00a0statistic research of frequencies in real life. Eskeland warned against guesswork and rough\u00a0\u00aboverall assessment\u00bb in the evaluation of guilt in criminal cases.<\/p>\n

To pursue this \u00abscience reform\u00bb of the legal profession Eskeland established a high-level cross-professional group and tied up with the pioneering Innocence project in the US. Unfortunately,\u00a0this reform work had a concrete case of miscarried justice as its basis (The Torgersen Case) and reluctance to admitting to a gross mistake seems to have blocked the judiciary and the\u00a0authorities from vital new insights decisive to preventing wrong convictions in the future. The erroneous methods in drawing conclusions on causal connections is not a problem limited to<\/p>\n

Norwegian courts. The work to reverse the conviction of Torgersen continues and, once the\u00a0basic flaws underlying that conviction are properly understood, it should have worldwide effect.<\/p>\n

Eskeland also joined the efforts to have the Norwegian awarders respect the original anti-militarist idea behind Alfred Nobel\u00b4s “prize for the champions of peace\u00bb and participated in a\u00a0demand for criminal investigation and several demands that the Swedish authorities intervene.<\/p>\n

He repeatedly nominated Richard Falk for the Nobel Peace Prize, for 2015 also IALANA and Peter Weiss.<\/p>\n

For his warm, caring and friendly character, his attitudes, ideas, and an untiring commitment\u00a0to people, peace, society, democracy and justice, St\u00e5le Eskeland will be sorely missed.<\/p>\n

He was of a clear mind till the end and was cared for by his wife, Kari Os Eskeland, who is a retired medical doctor.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Fredrik S. Heffermehl, cand. jur, LLM NYU, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and ex-Vice President of the International Peace Bureau. He is the author of <\/em>The Nobel Peace Prize, What Nobel Really Wanted (Praeger, 2010 – expanded versions in Chinese, Swedish, Finnish,\u00a0Spanish and [2014] Russian). fredpax@online.no<\/a> – http:\/\/www.nobelwill.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oslo, December 27, 2015 – A great Norwegian scholar for peace, justice and a sane foreign policy, St\u00e5le Eskeland, died yesterday at age 72. He was a retired professor of (Norwegian and international) criminal law at the University of Oslo, who never shied away from pointing out social and political wrongs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}