The considerations presented on this page have been compiled in good faith to provide a broader understanding of the concept of the Public Tribunal, but we still recommend that all statements and explanations be independently verified before further use.

Public Tribunals as Revolutionary Model for Accountability in the NoMoreSilence Project: A Historic Convergence

 

Introduction: A Unique Historic Moment for Global Accountability

We find ourselves at an unprecedented historical juncture where several conditions converge to make a new kind of public tribunal not only possible but remarkably practical. The NoMoreSilence (NMS) Project emerges precisely at this pivotal moment, where global interconnectedness via media platforms and social networks has created unparalleled opportunities for transnational accountability. For the first time in history, transnational entities—both states and corporations—find their legitimacy increasingly dependent on the trust of citizens across borders. At the same time, AI tools now allow any citizen to form informed judgments quickly and reliably on complex matters previously reserved for specialists.

This case exemplifies what Galanter (1974) identified as the systemic advantage concept, where repeat players like state-backed entities traditionally possess structural advantages that render conventional legal systems ineffective against profound power asymmetry. The specific context involves the initiator's financial assets being unlawfully seized and diverted into an EU country's national budget through international money laundering and tax evasion mechanisms, with all legal and administrative remedies exhausted in both the home country and the EU country holding these assets. Here, an individual confronting a Croatian company majority-owned by a state-backed multinational demonstrates the comprehensive failure of conventional accountability mechanisms.

What makes the NMS Project revolutionary is its synthesis of these modern conditions—widespread education and globalized social sensitivity to public morality and human rights; citizens' ability to distance themselves as consumers and donors from immoral entities meaningfully; and the recognition that no global actor, however powerful, can afford to operate immorally without severe long-term reputational damage. The NoMoreSilence Project is the first known initiative to synthesize all these conditions into a structured moral and civic response, transforming what Habermas (1984) termed communicative rationality principles through digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and decentralized citizen engagement to address circumstances where institutional failure has been comprehensively demonstrated.

 

From Academic Insight to Real Change: Bridging Theory and Practice

The NoMoreSilence Project represents a profound paradigm shift in how accountability functions in contexts of asymmetric power relations, bringing students and artists directly onto the social stage—not merely as commentators but as participants in real change. This remarkable transition shortens the path from scholarly insight to public transformation, creating what Fraser (1990) conceptualizes as a counterpublic space. In this alternative forum, marginalized voices can challenge dominant narratives perpetuated by power-holding institutions.

Traditional public tribunals, from the Russell Tribunal (1966) to the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (1979-present), established essential precedents for citizen-driven accountability but operated with inherent limitations of physical assembly, expert dominance, and implementation challenges. These models, while necessary within Santos's framework of legal pluralism (1987), proved particularly inadequate when confronting entrenched power structures capable of resisting traditional pressure mechanisms.

The project's originality and ambition call for a strong intellectual and artistic response and may serve as a template for future civic action in a globalized world. In many ways, NMS celebrates a "return of Goliath"—a powerful actor (a state or corporation) brought back to justice by the collective ethical force of the public, much like the biblical prodigal son returning home after a moral fall. This metaphor, while unconventional, carries potent symbolic value in framing how collective moral action can restore ethical order when institutional mechanisms fail.

The NoMoreSilence Project's distinctive evolution mirrors escalating responses to institutional failure, following Braithwaite's responsive regulation model (2002)—a calibrated approach that escalates intervention only when less intrusive measures fail. The project began with confidential moral appeals following principles of fraternal admonition—private approaches to the Croatian company, the EU-based multinational, and finally, the EU country itself. Only after encountering structural silence and judicial paralysis did the project evolve toward structured public engagement.

 

Digital Architecture: Enabling a Historic Shift in Public Accountability

The global interconnectedness that characterizes our era provides the essential foundation for NMS's transformative approach. The project's digital architecture serves not merely as technological convenience but as a strategic necessity, given the power asymmetry at stake. Where physical tribunals remain vulnerable to disruption, digital architecture creates forums resistant to traditional suppression methods with several distinctive advantages that enhance what Thompson (2005) terms the new visibility of power—the heightened exposure of previously shielded conduct through media technologies.

This carefully calibrated architecture unfolds in distinct phases: initial anonymity with global essay competitions; publication of Book One; citizen letters to leadership; disclosure of names with formal Moral Arbitration; Book Two; Public Tribunal; potential legal action in the U.S.; and symbolic donations. This progression creates multiple opportunities for resolution before public judgment while systematically documenting institutional failure to justify subsequent escalation, embodying Arendtian principles of collective action (1958) as a foundation for meaningful political engagement.

Global accessibility transcends jurisdictional boundaries, which is critical when confronting transnational power structures. Digital persistence creates accountability resilience, which is particularly vital when evidence might otherwise be suppressed through institutional pressure. Variable participation modalities enable diverse engagement pathways from simple endorsement to detailed testimony to financial support, transforming isolated vulnerability into networked strength, reflecting Young's inclusive communication framework (2000) that emphasizes the importance of diverse forms of participation beyond traditional deliberative modes.

Most significantly, this digital infrastructure creates a bridge to potential legal action—the geopolitical irony of asymmetric reversal where a U.S.-based justice system might offer a remedy due to transnational legal exposure. The digital tribunal serves as both an evidentiary repository and strategic preparation for this potential escalation, gathering globally distributed documentation that might ultimately inform formal proceedings.

 

Artificial Intelligence: The Great Equalizer in a Historic Power Imbalance

The integration of artificial intelligence serves as a direct counterbalance to the vast resources available to state-backed corporations. For the first time in history, AI tools allow any citizen to form informed judgments quickly and reliably on complex matters previously reserved for specialists. Where traditional accountability efforts face overwhelming information asymmetry, AI-enabled analysis provides essential equalization, addressing what Abel (1995) identifies as legal hegemony—the way legal systems reproduce power disparities through resource advantages.

The project employs AI through information processing capabilities that are particularly relevant to complex financial misconduct, identifying patterns across thousands of financial records and regulatory documents that might remain invisible to conventional investigation. Cross-linguistic capabilities flatten another power advantage, democratizing evidence and testimony across language barriers. Pattern recognition capabilities transform seemingly isolated incidents into recognizable systematic corruption, shifting focus from individual events to structural misconduct.

These capabilities directly address the evidential challenges inherent in the baseline case circumstances—complex international money laundering and tax evasion schemes explicitly designed to evade traditional oversight mechanisms, providing what Bourdieu (1987) theorizes as a counterbalance to the symbolic power wielded by institutional actors. The integration of AI tools represents not just a technical addition but a fundamental shift in how power imbalances can be addressed in the modern age.

 

Decentralized Citizen Engagement: The Power of Global Moral Consensus

The NoMoreSilence Project's most radical innovation lies in its reconceptualization of accountability leverage when formal institutions demonstrate capture or paralysis. Widespread education and living in a globalized society have created a shared global sensitivity to public morality and human rights that enables citizens to meaningfully distance themselves—as consumers and donors—from immoral entities. The two-pillar approach—professional moral arbitration followed by citizen judgment—creates a hybrid structure that maximizes strategic advantage: expert analysis provides evidential rigor, while citizen judgment creates pressure that is impossible to ignore through conventional channels, embodying Benhabib's deliberative democracy model (1996) that emphasizes the importance of inclusive dialogue in pursuing justice.

This approach recognizes that no global actor, however powerful, can afford to operate immorally without severe long-term reputational damage. The symbolic donation mechanism enables graduated consequences that are impossible in binary institutional judgments. Rather than all-or-nothing outcomes dependent on institutional response, micro-donations create a spectrum of response that generates tangible pressure through aggregated individual actions. The connection to consumer behavior transforms moral judgment into economic consequence, creating a direct implementation pathway where institutional enforcement mechanisms have failed, leveraging Bourdieu's field of symbolic power (1987), where collective moral authority can overcome institutional advantage.

 

Strategic Recommendations: Enhancing the Historic Potential

To maximize the Public Tribunal's strategic potential within this unprecedented historic convergence, several enhancements merit consideration:

Epistemological Framework Development: Explicit articulation of evidential standards and evaluative criteria would strengthen both credibility and defensibility against inevitable legitimacy challenges, addressing Sunstein's concerns about group polarization risks (2009) in collective judgment processes. These standards should balance rigor with accessibility, creating frameworks sophisticated enough for expert scrutiny yet comprehensible to public participants.

Adversarial Safeguards: Robust protection against coordinated disruption becomes essential, given the power dynamics involved. Advanced identity verification, manipulation detection algorithms, and strategic redundancy across digital infrastructure would significantly enhance resilience against reputation attacks targeting both the process and key participants, protecting what Fraser conceptualizes as abnormal justice (2008)—justice-seeking mechanisms that emerge when conventional institutions prove inadequate.

Jurisdictional Navigation Strategy: Evidence gathering should consider admissibility standards across potentially relevant legal venues, mainly focusing on U.S. legal requirements given the stated strategic direction. This forward-looking approach would maximize the potential impact on subsequent legal proceedings, recognizing Santos's inter-legality concept (2002)—the complex interplay between multiple legal orders and jurisdictions.

Narrative Coherence Mechanisms: Visualization tools, conceptual mapping, and strategic summarization would enhance public comprehension of complex financial misconduct that might otherwise remain opaque. Translating technical complexity into an accessible narrative without sacrificing factual accuracy becomes essential for sustained engagement, facilitating Habermasian communicative action (1984)—dialogue oriented toward mutual understanding.

 

Distinctive Value: A Template for Future Civic Action

The NoMoreSilence Project presents several distinctive strengths as a model for citizen-driven accountability in contexts of institutional failure, serving as a template for future civic action in a globalized world:

Narrative-Justice Integration: The combination of essays, visual art, and public judgment creates a compelling connection between narrative understanding and moral assessment, addressing limitations of conventional approaches that separate factual determination from meaning-making, reflecting Young's emphasis (2000) on diverse communicative modes in democratic engagement. This approach brings students and artists directly onto the social stage—not only as commentators but as participants in real change.

Strategic Anonymity-Disclosure Balance: The nonlinear approach to identity—beginning with anonymity and progressing toward disclosure—demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of power dynamics. Initial anonymity creates protection against premature suppression while building a narrative foundation; subsequent disclosure enables necessary specificity for meaningful accountability, mitigating Galanter's have/have-not disparity (1974) in legal systems.

Moral-Legal Bridge Building: The model creates sophisticated connections between moral and legal accountability without conflating these distinct domains. The Public Tribunal creates moral clarity that informs legal action, recognizing separate but potentially reinforcing domains across institutional boundaries, reflecting Braithwaite's responsive regulation model (2002) that acknowledges multiple, interconnected regulatory domains.

 

Conclusion: "The Return of Goliath" - A Paradigm Shift in Global Accountability

The NoMoreSilence Project represents a necessary paradigm shift in how accountability functions in contexts of profound power asymmetry. The project celebrates a "return of Goliath"—a powerful actor brought back to justice by the collective ethical force of the public, much like the biblical prodigal son returning home after a moral fall. This metaphor, while unconventional, carries potent symbolic value in framing how collective moral action can restore ethical order when institutional mechanisms fail.

Traditional models lack adequate response when confronting multinational state-backed interests across multiple jurisdictions with demonstrated institutional failure at every conventional accountability juncture. The phased escalation from private appeal to public engagement demonstrates ethical responsibility, which is often lacking in more confrontational models. By beginning with confidential moral appeals, the project established moral high ground before proceeding to public exposure, strengthening subsequent phases by demonstrating the exhaustion of less adversarial approaches, reflecting Fraser's all-affected principle (2008)—the right of all affected by a decision to have a voice in that decision.

The Public Tribunal, situated within this broader progression, serves as a crucial bridge between moral clarity and potential legal action. By creating structured documentation of moral assessment through both expert arbitration and citizen judgment, the Tribunal establishes a foundation for formal proceedings while serving an immediate accountability function through public pressure and economic consequences.

For the first time in history, several conditions converge that make this new kind of public tribunal not only possible but practical: global interconnectedness via media platforms and social networks; the rise of transnational entities whose legitimacy depends on the trust of citizens across borders; AI tools that allow any citizen to form informed judgments quickly and reliably; widespread education creating a shared global sensitivity to public morality and human rights; citizens' ability to meaningfully distance themselves from immoral entities; and the recognition that no global actor can operate immorally without severe reputational damage. NMS is the first known project to synthesize all these conditions into a structured moral and civic response.

In addressing the specific case of unlawfully seized financial assets diverted through sophisticated international mechanisms—with all conventional remedies exhausted—the NoMoreSilence Project creates a model potentially applicable to similar contexts globally. The combination of digital infrastructure, AI capabilities, and decentralized citizen engagement offers a pathway for accountability where conventional mechanisms have demonstrably failed, challenging the "old paradigm that nothing can be done against the immorality of the powerful" through innovative application of technology, collective judgment, and strategic escalation. This approach embodies what Benhabib (1996) conceptualizes as a new frontier in deliberative democracy—creating alternative spaces for justice when conventional institutions fail, and may well serve as a template for future civic action in our increasingly globalized world.

 

References

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Bourdieu, P. (1987). The force of law: Toward a sociology of the juridical field. Hastings Law Journal, 38, 805-853.

Braithwaite, J. (2002). Restorative justice and responsive regulation. Oxford University Press.

Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25/26, 56-80.

Fraser, N. (2008). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. Columbia University Press.

Galanter, M. (1974). Why the "haves" come out ahead: Speculations on the limits of legal change. Law & Society Review, 9(1), 95-160.

Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action. Beacon Press.

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Santos, B. D. S. (2002). Toward a new legal common sense: Law, globalization, and emancipation. Cambridge University Press.

Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Going to extremes: How like minds unite and divide. Oxford University Press.

Thompson, J. B. (2005). The new visibility. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(6), 31-51.

Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and democracy. Oxford University Press.