We are very excited to unveil a new section in this issue. Having had the project founders on our editorial board for several years,Footnote 1 we are delighted to integrate Legal Sightseeing into the LJIL. As the curators of this new section, Sofia Stolk and Renske Vos, explained in a previous LJIL editorial:
If one takes an approach of wonder and curiosity, encounters with international law can be found in unusual places, sometimes accidental or with unintended effects. Through such occurrences, we have become interested in how international law is presented to ‘the public’, and in turn in what that public shows up for, and how art is often a mediator in that encounter. The question that drives our engagement with these sites and practices of legal sightseeing is: what is international law doing here? There are at least two ways of understanding this question. On the one hand, it opens-up from our amazement at the manifestation of and encounter with international law at a particular instance: what is it doing here?! On the other hand, we wonder what it does to bring international law to this encounter: what is it doing?Footnote 2
We invite you on the LJIL’s legal sightseeing tour to reflect on these questions. Check out the first stop of this tour in this issue, with Silvia Steininger taking us to the “Kongokonferenz”, at Wilhelmstraße 92, Berlin.
Are you legal sightseeing? We welcome your visual contributions to this section!Footnote 3