Eugene Cotran

Judge Eugene Cotran (6 August 1938 – 7 June 2014) was a circuit judge in England and one of the main jurists in charge of the drafting of a Basic Law of Palestine.

Biography Born in Jerusalem on 6 August 1938, Cotran studied at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt and the University of Leeds, taking both a bachelor and master of laws degree in 1958. He was a research fellow in international law at the Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge taking a diploma in international law in 1959. He was in 1971 awarded an LL.D. by the University of London for his publications in the field of African law and his work at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

He was called to the English bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1959.

After the Oslo Accords, Judge Cotran was in 1994 appointed to the Board of the Commissioners of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (PICHR).

Works published Readings in African Law Cb: Volumes 1 and 2 (together with Neville Rubin) (Routledge: 1970) The Arab-Israeli Accords: Legal Perspective (Cimel Book Series, 1996) The Role of the Judiciary in the Protection of Human Rights (Centre of Islamic & Middle Eastern Law Series, 1997) Democracy: The Rule of Law and Islam (Cimel Book Series, 1999) The Rule of Law in the Middle East and the Islamic World: Human Rights and the Judicial Process (together with Mai Yamani, 2000) The Protection of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories (together with Emma Brown), in: Rainer Grote and Tilmann Röder (eds.), Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity (OUP: Oxford and New York 2011)