The problem of truth in war crimes trials

Abstract

The author discusses the relationship between the truth and criminal trial in general, with a special focus on war crimes trials and their consequences for the fragile processes of consolidation of violated collective identities in post-conflict states. The authors challenge the idea that a criminal trial is a search for the truth, and present a philosophical argument to the effect that the trial is in fact an event conforming to the model of what the author calls “quasi-epistemological games”, rather than the model of an epistemological engine. The purpose of the trial is quasi-epistemological, because the model of an epistemological engine entails that the trial is primarily a search for the truth, while this is not the case with criminal trials in general, and especially with war crimes trials. He argues that, while the criminal trial readily invites the truth of the events if it is discovered, it can be and often is both valid and valuable regardless of whether “the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth” is discovered in its course.

Keywords

• search for the truth
• quasi-epistemological games
• legitimacy
• war crimes
• trials
• collective identities