Introduction to the Symposium on Art, Aesthetics, and International Courts

Abstract

This essay provides a general framework for thinking about art and international justice, and more specifically the work of international courts. As international justice searches for new methodologies and instruments of inquiry, aesthetic experience proves to be a lens through which it is possible to deepen our understanding of international justice as a specific social practice in its dynamic form. Art is both a representation of reality and an affective state in which both participants in judicial proceedings and outside observers can interact and experience justice directly. This essay and the symposium as a whole demonstrate that art is implicit in the rhetoric of international courts, their architectural design, and their commemorative practices expressed by symbolic reparations and outreach activities. In convening this symposium with my coeditor Karima Bennoune, who is UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, we aim to start a discussion on the connection between art and international justice. The latter discipline embodies the rules of conduct that have universal or quasi-universal application, reflecting shared consensus about certain areas of human activity that are of global or transnational concern. Ironically, if viewed from a static point of view, international law, while aiming at universality, is prone to fragmentation. 1 Academic debates addressing this dichotomy are plentiful, 2 yet they tend to focus on material outcomes of the process of the administration of justice-judgments and legal texts-often leaving untouched the actual direct experience of law's active participants and outside observers. There is thus scope to develop new methodologies that engage with the discipline of international justice from a different, more experiential, standpoint. 3 This is where art and creative expression can prove to be useful tools for studying international justice. This introduction discusses the overarching discipline of international justice and the specific bodies tasked with interpreting it, namely international courts. The arguments regarding the value of engaging with creative expression extend to both international justice and to international courts interchangeably, unless a clear distinction is made. Furthermore, the essay adopts a wide understanding of art that encompasses its representational and