James Kirkpatrick Stewart is a Canadian lawyer with over thirty years of experience as Crown counsel handling criminal trials and appeals for the prosecution, including more than eight years working with the United Nations in international criminal law prosecutions as a trial and appellate counsel and legal manager. Stewart was nominated by Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, as one of three candidates for election to the post of ICC Deputy Prosecutor (Prosecution). He was duly elected by the Assembly of States Parties on 16 November 2012 for a period of nine years. Mr Stewart was sworn in on 8 March 2013 and as Deputy Prosecutor of the ICC, he will report directly to the Prosecutor.
Stewart was previously employed as General Counsel in the Crown Law Office – Criminal, Ministry of the Attorney General, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In the past, he has served as Senior Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR); as Chief of Prosecutions in the OTP at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY); and as Senior Appeals Counsel and then Chief of the Appeals and Legal Advisory Division in the OTP at the ICTR.
Stewart is married and has three children.
Stewart was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and is bilingual in English and French. Educated at Bishop’s College School in Lennoxville, Québec, he attended Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario (B.A., 1967), and Université Laval, in Sainte-Foy, Québec (M. ès A., 1971). In 1975, he graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, articled for prominent criminal defence lawyer, Robert J. Carter, Q.C., in 1975-6, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1977.