The elephant in the courtroom: revisiting judicial hospitality in light of recent universal jurisdiction trials

Germany has been receiving praise for its judicial hospitality, a notion that conceives of universal jurisdiction exercise as an act of integrating migrated survivors. Considering the comparatively large quantity of universal jurisdiction trials hosted by Germany, this praise seems warranted. But when examining not just whether but also how trials are conducted, with migrated survivors being denied access to translations, for example, Germany simultaneously appears to contradict judicial hospitality’s integrative purpose. In this article, I resolve this puzzle, arguing that rather than by ‘the state’, judicial hospitality is exercised by the prosecution and the Courts. While the former complies with judicial hospitality, the latter does not. Judicial hospitality presently theorises a duty to hospitality in relation to the prosecution only, leaving the question of a duty to hospitality for the Courts open. Addressing this gap, I offer a reconceptualisation of judicial hospitality centred on the notion of (loss of) control.