Unspoken Truths: The Uses of Secrecy in War Crimes Trials

12/11

12. November 2024. 14:00 - 15:30

ELTE Faculty of Law – classroom B/II (1053 Budapest, Kecskeméti u. 10-12, 1½ floor, Room 112.)

11/12

12. November 2024.14:00 - 15:30

ELTE Faculty of Law – classroom B/II (1053 Budapest, Kecskeméti u. 10-12, 1½ floor, Room 112.)

Prof. Timothy Waters from Indiana University / Maurer School of Law gives an open lecture with the title Unspoken Truths: The Uses of Secrecy in War Crimes Trials.

War crimes courts use a lot of secrecy, much more than domestic courts. And for good reason, if you think about what can happen if the identity of an important witness to terrible atrocities were to leak out. But how does this secrecy work, and what are its costs for justice and reconciliation?

As part of Professor Péter Hack’s Transitional Justice course, this lecture will look at the many types of secrecy produced in courts – protected witnesses, ex parte hearings, redacted documents, and more – and consider the effects secrecy has on trials, including their processes, judgments, and relationship to broader efforts to achieve transitional justice.

Timothy William Waters is a professor of international law at Indiana University. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a former Humboldt Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut in Heidelberg. He writes and teaches on the laws of war, international criminal law, secession, and changes in states’ borders. He is the author of Boxing Pandora: Rethinking Borders, States, and Secession in a Democratic World (Yale 2020) and editor of The Milošević Trial: An Autopsy (Oxford 2013). He is a frequent contributor to policy debate on international law and politics. He has published extensively in leading journals of international law and international relations, including at Yale, Harvard, NYU, Virginia, Duke, Stanford, and George Washington.

All students interested in the lecture are cordially invited to attend, only a pre-registration is required here.