Courtroom research: the case of french terror trials

Faculty Colloquium

Presenter: Sharon Weill, Associate Professor, American University of Paris.

Discussant: Sofia Cabarcas Macia, PhD candidate at Sciences Po Law School.

Since 2017, alongside a multidisciplinary research team, Sharon Weill have conducted an ethnography of the French terrorism courts in Paris. This seminar will present the research based on a manuscript forthcoming from Cambridge University Press (Studies in Law and Society).

The first part will focus on the socio-legal methods employed, including courtroom ethnography and the development of an analytical framework that examines doctrine, actors, institutions, and politics.

The second part will open the door to the courtroom, introducing the judicial scene and the actors, along with the findings from three generations of jihadist trials identified: from the "laboratory" of the 16th chamber, through the slow justice of the assize court up to the “historic (show) trials"

Sharon Weill is an Associate Professor of international law at the American University of Paris and a Research Associate at the ‘Centre de droit comparé et internationalisation du droit’ of the Sorbonne University. She also teaches at PSIA.

Her research focuses on the links between law, armed conflict, terrorism, and the role of judges, making use of socio-legal approaches, including trial ethnography. Her research encompasses national and international courts, including terrorism, war crimes, asylum, and military courts. She holds a PhD from Geneva niversity (2012) and did her postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley (2015).

She is the author the The Role of National Courts in Applying International Humanitarian Law (Oxford University Press, 2014), The President on Trial- Prosecuting Hissène Habré (co-eds) (Oxford University Press, 2020), and Terror on Trial: An Ethnograpghy of French Courts (Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).