Robert Cordy is one of three international legal experts named to the first-ever legal Ethics Council created by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The goal of the council is to implement judicial reform in Ukraine as the nation looks to put accusations of corruption among judges behind it.
"I was working hard with the rest of the council to make some improvements and reforms," Cordy told Law360 in an interview. "I was over there in November, and we were fully invested in the effort."
Cordy was supposed to travel to Ukraine in February to begin interviewing candidates for Ukraine's High Council of Justice, which oversees the judicial branch.
"The State Department called and said: 'Bob, you cannot go,'" he recalled.
Since the war broke out, Cordy, like many, has been glued to the horrific images emerging from the invasion. His sadness has been compounded by the fact that the conflict has halted the judicial reform effort that he and others had been implementing.
"This is beyond anything I could imagine seeing in my lifetime," Cordy said of the war. "What's happening to those people is just gut-wrenching and so unfair and so insane."
In addition to Cordy, others on the Ethics Council include Sir Anthony Hooper, a retired Court of Appeals judge from the U.K.; Lavly Perling, a former prosecutor general from Estonia; and three Ukrainian judges, Lev Kyshakevych, Yuriy Tryasun and Volodymyr Siverin.
"We were very optimistic. There was a real investment by the administration, by the president and others, to create a more robust judicial system," Cordy said. "To see all of that just fall apart, to see everything fall apart so quickly is just heartbreaking."
Cordy said he did not have any direct interaction with Zelensky, the entertainer turned Ukrainian president who has emerged as a globally recognized figure and the face of Ukraine's resistance to Russian aggression. But he said the reform efforts Zelensky had been working towards were "honest and vigorous."
Cordy led McDermott's Boston office in 2001 before Gov. Paul Cellucci appointed him to the SJC, the state's highest appellate court. He returned to the firm after stepping down from the top court in 2016. His current practice focuses on business litigation, white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and appellate work.
He was invited to speak at judicial conferences in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, in 2015 and 2016 and hosted delegations from Ukraine during his time on the SJC. Cordy said he has tried to communicate with people he knows in Ukraine via email since the fighting began but has only gotten a single response from someone saying that they are doing the best they can to stay safe.
"I think everybody is trying to take care of what they need to take care of," Cordy said.
Cordy said he hopes that the violence ceases and that an effort is made to document the atrocities that are going on, such as Wednesday's Russian airstrike that reportedly killed three people at a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol.
"Someone has to be held accountable for this, even if that is a small piece of it," Cordy said. "There needs to be a tribunal. Not years from now — months from now, if possible."
Cordy likened his proposal to the Nuremberg trials following World War II.
"That's a small, after-the-fact piece of this, but it's important and certainly the world is focused on it," he said. "Hopefully the international community will get behind it. You can't let people get away with this."
During his appointment to the Ethics Council, Cordy was supposed to visit Ukraine about once per month for a year. Now, he isn't sure when, or even if, he will return.
"I sure do hope I will be back," Cordy said. "I hope, I pray, but I really don't know. This is all so crazy."
--Editing by Alyssa Miller.
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