Acoustic Jurisprudence: Listening to the Trial of Simon Bikindi

Join IILAH and Liquid Architecture in a belated celebration of the release of

Acoustic Jurisprudence: Listening to the Trial of Simon Bikindi

By James E K Parker

Launched in conversation with James  by Professor Sundhya Pahuja and Joel Stern

with 30% discount available

Acoustic Jurisprudence explores the trial of Simon Bikindi, who was accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of inciting genocide with his songs. The book develops two main threads: one substantive, the other methodoligical. Substantively, it is the first detailed study of a trial of considerable legal, historical and musicological importance, both to Rwandans and to the wider international community. Methodologically, the book examines a dimension of legal thought and practice that is scarcely ever remarked upon. Sound is a condition of the administration of justice, and yet as a community of jurists we have become deaf to law and to the problem of the acoustic. The book argues therefore for a specifically acoustic jurisprudence, an orientation towards law and the practice of judgment attuned to questions of sound and listening.

Dr James Parker is a senior lecturer at Melbourne Law School, where he is also director of the research program ‘Law, Sound and the International’ at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.