"Unseen actors" are central to the "institutional makeup" of international courts and tribunals as registries and secretariats, law clerks and legal officers may exert varying levels of influence on the judicial process. At this conference, legal and political science scholars and members of adjudicatory institutions will consider and discuss the legitimacy of assigning "unseen actors" certain roles in the judicial process as well as the implications thereof for the legitimacy of the dispute settlement mechanism as such. The goal is to identify and analyze (alleged) common connections and patterns in the institutional makeup and daily practice of international courts and tribunals, through an interdisciplinary investigation of the functioning of "unseen actors," with the purpose of explaining and answering legitimacy challenges, for example, through the development of codes of ethics.