Virtually every contemporary international conflict has been preceded by a media campaign in which leaders foment ethnic, national, racial and religious hatred.

Recent precedent-setting judgments by international criminal tribunals have drastically altered the landscape of speech crimes, and yet international courts have struggled to prosecute speech crimes.

By scrutinizing the assumptions and strategies of the main parties in a trial, we can gain insights into the prevailing confusion in the international law of speech crimes. For starters, criminal law often perceives the connection between words and acts to be inherently problematical, since speech crimes are primarily crimes of intention, and subjective states are notoriously opaque.

In addition, context is everything in assessing a speech act, and courts receive evidence on the cultural resonance of speeches from expert witnesses, yet expert testimony often seems “lost in translation” in the courtroom. By understanding “how law knows,” we can gain greater insights into the strengths and limitations of a new regime of international justice.

Professor Richard Wilson
Richard A. Wilson is the founding director of the Human Rights Institute, the holder of the Gladstein Chair of Human Rights and Professor of Law and Anthropology at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

Focusing on international human rights, truth commissions and international criminal tribunals, Richard Wilson has drawn upon anthropological and empirical approaches to understand the ways in which national and international legal institutions write historical accounts of human rights violations and pursue accountability. Professor Wilson’s books include The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, as well as a number of edited volumes on human rights, humanitarianism and terrorism.

While a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, he completed his latest monograph, Writing History in International Criminal Trials, which was selected by Choice in 2012 as an “Outstanding Academic Title” in the law category. Having received his BSc. and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Richard Wilson has held fulltime faculty positions at the Universities of Essex and Sussex.

All are welcome to attend this seminar taking place from 5-6.30pm which will be followed by a drinks reception in the LTB lobby.