Ordinary theatre and extraordinary law at the khmer rouge tribunal

Abstract

This paper examines Cambodia’s current international criminal tribunal (ICT)— the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)—using a critical geopolitics of justice approach. This approach holds that ICTs necessarily work within an existing geopolitical terrain and that, as public events, they also exceed their formal mandates. With reference to the Cambodian case these two insights are expanded to consider questions of preceding justice and memorial initiatives and the performativity of law and sovereignty. I specifically explore the charge of ‘show trial’ that circulates in international English-language mass media discourse on the ECCC. I argue that this charge unthinkingly r..