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 revives the geopolitical ostracism of Cambodia that occurred in the period following Khmer Rouge rule and misrecognises the productively theatrical nature of the legal event. There is a critical need to interrogate the normative claim that international criminal justice be ‘not only done, but seen to be done’. This paper calls instead for a recognition of international(ised) legal events in terms of their productive theatricality and performative force.
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