Francis Boyle


Francis Anthony Boyle was an American human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He served as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina and supported the rights of Palestinians and indigenous peoples.

Early life, education and practice

Boyle was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 25, 1950. He stated that he "was born Irish", and did not consider himself to be a "White North American". Boyle received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Chicago in 1971. He earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude in 1976 and Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in political science from Harvard University in 1983. Boyle practiced tax and international tax law with Bingham, Dana & Gould.

Background and legal work

Boyle served as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the Provisional Government of the Palestinian Authority. He also represented two associations of citizens within Bosnia and was involved in developing the indictment against Slobodan Milošević for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over his career, he has represented national and international bodies including the Blackfoot Nation, the Nation of Hawaii, and the Lakota Nation, as well as numerous individual death penalty and human rights cases. He has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare. From 1991 to 1992, Boyle served as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations.
He served on the board of directors of Amnesty International, as a consultant to the American Friends Service Committee, and on the advisory board for the Council for Responsible Genetics. He drafted the US domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the US Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. He served as an adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1987–89 and 1991–93.

Activism and views

Amnesty International

As member of the board of Amnesty International USA at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, he claimed that Amnesty International USA acted in ways closely related to United States foreign policy interests. He stated that Amnesty, along with other human rights organisations in the US, failed to sufficiently criticise the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in Lebanon. Boyle stated his suspicion that Amnesty International, which is headquartered in London, was also subject to this bias. He attributed alleged links between Amnesty International and Western foreign policy interests to the relatively large financial contribution of Amnesty International USA to AI's international budget, which he estimated at 20%. Boyle added that Amnesty International was instrumental in publicizing the "Iraqi soldiers dumping children from incubators in Kuwait" hoax. He claimed aspects of organizational continuity and survival came ahead of human rights aims in Amnesty International. He stated "Amnesty International is primarily motivated not by human rights but by publicity. Second comes money. Third comes getting more members. Fourth, internal turf battles. And then finally, human rights, genuine human rights concerns."

Bosnian genocide case

During the war for independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Boyle became the first international-law legal adviser to the first Bosnia-Herzegovinian president, Alija Izetbegovic. Boyle prepared and filed with the International Court of Justice Case 91, also known as the Bosnian genocide case claiming that genocide took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that Serbia was responsible for and complicit in that genocide. The final verdict of the case in 2007 stated that while Serbia had not committed genocide, genocide indeed had taken place in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that Serbia was responsible for "failing to prevent and punish the genocide which it knew was taking place."

Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam

Boyle was one of the architects behind the "Freedom Charter" of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam following the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War having served as a member of the Advisory Committee on the formation of a Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam which was established "to explore the modalities for the establishment of a Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, and to recommend the objectives that should be achieved by such a Transnational Government". He spoke at the inaugural session of the TGTE in May 2010.

COVID-19 conspiracy theories

Based on circumstantial evidence, Boyle claimed that SARS-CoV-2 is a genetically engineered bioweapon that escaped from a high-level lab in Wuhan, China, that was created in a B4 Lab at UNC Chapel Hill. The lab-leak theory was found to be unlikely by the World Health Organization and researchers had not found evidence that the virus was created by genetic manipulation.

Domestic U.S. politics

Federal government of the United States

In October 1992, Boyle participated in the International Tribunal of Indigenous Peoples and Oppressed Nationalities in the United States of America that convened in San Francisco. Boyle, acting as a "special prosecutor", petitioned the tribunal to issue the following:
In the conclusion of a 37-point legal brief, Boyle wrote that the United States federal government was a hostis humani generis, and called on the tribunal to "condemn and repudiate" it and "its grotesque vision of a New World Order that is constructed upon warfare, bloodshed, violence, criminality, genocide, racism, colonialism, apartheid, massive violations of fundamental human rights, and the denial of the international legal right of self-determination" for indigenous peoples.

Hawaiian sovereignty movement

In 1993, Boyle gave a speech in which he called for Hawaiian independence from the United States.
In December 2004, Boyle stated that the United States is illegally occupying the state of Hawaii and he has encouraged Native Hawaiians to press for independence and, if necessary, unilaterally proclaim their own state. In a three-hour speech entitled "The Restoration of Hawaii's Independence", Boyle claimed that the United States has conceded it unlawfully occupied the Kingdom of Hawaii and that fact alone "gives the Kanaka Maoli the entitlement to restore their independent status as a sovereign nation state."
Boyle argued that, like the Palestinians, Hawaiians should "exercise their right of self-determination", instead of asking the permission for it. Boyle stated that "the plight of the Hawaiian people is generally well known in the world and there's a great deal of sympathy." He concluded his speech by stating that "Hawaii should send the strongest message to Washington it can. Letters carry no weight. The number of people in the street do. Gandhi threw the mighty British out of India with peaceful, nonviolent force. People power, submit to it."
Boyle, who advised Hawaiian independence groups from 1992, argued that "The legal cause for the restoration of the kingdom is air-tight". In addition to devising a draft constitution for one group, the Nation of Hawaii, Boyle filed suit in the United States Supreme Court in 1998 to demand the restoration of Hawaiian independence and reparations "for all the harm inflicted on the Kingdom of Hawaii". The court later determined that the kingdom "was a non-recognised sovereign that does not have access to the US courts". Boyle added that Hawaiian independence groups will "have to wait until the Kingdom of Hawaii has achieved substantial diplomatic recognition and then I could file something in the international court of justice." Boyle further stated that "Native Hawaiians operate in accordance with the Aloha spirit, which is similar to Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha force, and I take the position that if Gandhi can throw the mighty British Empire out of India with Satyagraha, Native Hawaiians can throw the mighty American empire out of Hawaii with Aloha." In a 2008 interview, Boyle restated his confidence that Hawaii will eventually achieve independence from the United States.

Administrations from 1992

Boyle endorsed the impeachment of Bill Clinton, though not for the reasons stated in the Articles passed by the House of Representatives. Instead, Professor Boyle called on Clinton to be impeached for the "right reasons"—specifically: launching military attacks against Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq in violation of the War Powers Resolution and the U.S. Constitution.
Boyle appealed in January 2010 to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to take action against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney among other members of the Bush administration. The United States does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. In November 2011, Boyle was involved as a prosecutor in the four-day Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia, an organisation established by former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, an opponent of the Iraq War, to decide if President George W. Bush had violated international law. At the conclusion of the event, the two men were found guilty of committing war crimes.
In April 2018, Boyle gave a statement regarding Trump's missile strike in Syria, asserting that it was a violation of multiple charters and legal statutes, a crime against peace, and an illegal and impeachable offense. In a column, Boyle referred to Trump as "another representative for U.S. imperialism and neoliberal capitalism."