Main Content
2014 Annual Celebration | 7th Marburg Lecture on International Criminal Law by Professor Andreas Wirsching
The ICWC's annual celebration and the 7th Marburg Lecture on International Criminal Law on 4 December 2014 marked the zenith of the conference on "The Defence in International Criminal Courts". As in previous years, it took place in the historical auditorium of the Old University.
The 2014 Marburg Lecture on International Criminal Law took place under the umbrella of the international and interdisciplinary conference “The Defence in International Criminal Courts” organized and hosted by the International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials (ICWC). From 3 to 5 December 2014, a number of high-ranking scholars and renowned defence counsels from inside and outside Germany were invited to discuss historical as well as contemporary aspects of international criminal procedures.
The speaker of this year's lecture was Professor Dr. Andreas Wirsching, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich/Berlin who gave a presentation on “Defence Counsels of Inhumanity? The Difficulty of Defending War Criminals in Germany after 1945”. Professor Wisching underlined the fact that many legal counsels in the young Federal Republic could exert an immense influence on the question how to proceed with war criminals. Most of the networking activities among the defence counsels took place in Nuremberg.
Within the framework of the event, the freshly graduated trial observers of the ICWC Trial-Monitoring Programme were awarded their certificates. Through lectures and practical experiences, the Trial-Monitoring Programme aims at training students from Philipps University Marburg to become international trial observers. Each year, two of them have the opportunity to be part of a six-month trial observer mission at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) that seek to deal with the past of the Khmer Rouge regime.