ILA Seminar Series - When Theatre Meets Law: The Quest for an International Lawyer's Cathartic Moment

When Theatre Meets Law: The Quest for an International Lawyer's Cathartic Moment

Speaker: Professor Andrea Bianchi, Geneva Graduate Institute and JC Smith Trust Fund Visiting Scholar 

Theatre and law are often said to share a few common features. The courtroom is often depicted as being like a theatre stage, attention is paid in both law and theatre to clothing and posturing, to speech articulation and diction abilities, to the importance of effectively interacting with words and gestures with an audience, and so on and so forth. One can also look at plays that speak about law and examine how theatre presents or deals with legal issues. But can one analogize the content of a play to the processes that international legal scholarship has been undertaking in the past thirty-five years or so? Can one use the content of the play to provoke some kind of catharsis in an audience of international lawyers and lead them to foreground their emotions, to express their doubts and possibly redeem their beliefs in the way in which they think about and practice international law? This is the experiment that I will attempt to carry out in this seminar.

Andrea Bianchi is a Professor of International Law and Director of Studies at the Geneva Graduate Institute. He is the JC Smith Trust Fund Visiting Scholar at the University of Nottingham School of Law in 2025. Andrea's publications address topics that range from international legal theory and treaty interpretation, human rights and international humanitarian law, terrorism and counterterrorism, to the law of jurisdiction and jurisdictional immunities, state responsibility, non-state actors, and the law of treaties. Andrea's recent books include Demystifying Treaty Interpretation (CUP 2024; co-authored with Fuad Zarbiyev); International Law's Invisible Frames: Social Cognition and Knowledge Production in International Law (OUP 2023; co-edited with Moshe Hirsch); International Law Theories (OUP 2016); Interpretation in International Law (OUP 2015; co-edited with Matthew Windsor and Daniel Peat); and Transparency in International Law (CUP 2013; co-edited with Anne Peters). 

All welcome to attend.