Ethics before international criminal courts

            Ethical issues applicable within the lawyers are one of the main and most important challenges that international criminal jurisdictions will have to face in the near future. Indeed, multiplication of these courts and the rising number of cases dealt show how these questions arise with a peculiar acuteness. Lawyers had to build a deontology of the profession based essentially on empirical ground as they were confronted to judicial practices coming from different legal systems. The initiators of this conference pointed out the following observation: the resolution of ethical problems that arise before international criminal courts is, to a large extent, left to the practice of the courts before which the lawyers argue. One goal of the conference is to develop good ethical practices on the basis of existing international instruments and to sensitize participants - be they lawyers, members of the courts, judges or prosecutors – to the importance of ensuring these practices and the standards of ethics of which bars and lawyers in particular should be guards. In a transversal approach, will be discussed both ethical issues specific to the attorney (mandate, secrecy, ...) and ethical issues faced by different actors in an international criminal trial. The fundamental nature of the questions envisaged transcend however the profession and is not only reserved to criminal lawyers or specialist of international law. Ethics is a matter of all lawyers because they are all concerned by ethical issues. Proceedings before international criminal courts is the hub of continental law traditions and those of common law, so that the presence of foreign actors (London, Paris, The Hague, Geneva, Barcelona) is likely to shed light to the whole subject. Answers to these ethical questions must not only be envisaged under the scope of the bar even an international bar. The questioning will be interdisciplinary thanks the presence of judges and different members of international courts as member of the registrar of member of the prosecutor. This is probably the first time this topic is the subject of a seminar. Download the full presentation of the seminar with registration form Downlaod the registration form Downlaod the invitation Downlaod the program