Julian Burnside - Julian Burnside QC, is a barrister, writer and President of Liberty Victoria. He has acted pro bono in many human rights cases and is passionate about the arts. He elaborates the law in relation to art censorship and how it is exercised, including the complexities of "intention," "context," "reasonableness," public attitudes, protecting human rights and freedom of expression.
He is President of Liberty Victoria, Chair of fortyfive downstairs and author of Wordwatching - Fieldnotes from an amateur Philologist and Watching Brief - Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice.
Gary Cazalet - Gary Cazalet teaches and researches Dispute Resolution and Legal Ethics at the Law School, University of Melbourne.
Cazalet has a particular interest in the intersection of law and literature.
Gerry Simpson - Gerry Simpson is a Professor of Public International Law at the London School of Economics, and holds a Chair in Law at the University of Melbourne.
He is the author of Great Powers and Outlaw States (awarded a prize with the American Society of International Law). His latest book is Law, War and Crime: War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law.
Simpson has taught at the University of British Columbia and has held visiting positions at Harvard Law School. Simpson engages in human rights training with the UK Foreign Office and the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Centre.
Gerry Simpson and Julian Burnside debate the tensions inherent in war crime trials from Nuremberg to the trial of Saddam Hussein.
Those tensions are found between collective guilt and individual responsibility; and the between the instinct that war, at worst is an error, and the conviction that war is a crime- Melbourne Writers Festival