Review Staged: Show trials, political theater, and the aesthetics of judgment Minou Arjomand New York, Columbia University Press, 2018, 248 pp., ISBN: 9780231184885 Contemporary Political Theory (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-019-00308-0 This book sets itself an ambitious and timely goal: to examine the multiple interfaces between law and theatre. Both in the court room and on stage, judgments are issued and solicited, demanded and contested: how do these types of judgment stand in relation to each other? Do they share specific characteristics, or should we rather treat them as different in kind – the former aiming for legally binding objectivity, while the latter strive for agreement through deliberation or acclamation? These questions are as pressing today as they have ever been, for at least two interrelated reasons: trials resemble, in obvious and sometimes less obvious ways, theatre performances, and we want to better understand what forms of theatricality are intrinsic to court proceedings and what forms should be deemed problematic. Secondly, when spectators watch a play on stage, their ability to judge might also inform the civic activity of evaluating what is going on in the wider public, once the performance is over. In other words, Arjomand’s interest in the interface between law and theatre is both politically and aesthetically motivated. This double interest underpins the book’s originality. Arjomand reconstructs the complex relations between law and theatre within a particular context: German theatre from roughly 1918 to 1968. The book is divided into five parts, three centred around crucial historical figures – Hannah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator – one chapter dedicated to a documentary theatre play (Trial in Nuremberg) and a conclusion that deals with law and theatre today. This peculiar structure throws up some problems, but before I turn to my interpretation, a summary of the main argument is in order. Given the book’s erudition and scope, I shall merely focus on some of the central motifs running through it. The chapter on Arendt initially treads relatively familiar territory, focusing especially on Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arjomand convincingly demonstrates that Arendt’s main concern about the Eichmann trial was not so much its theatrical Ó 2019 Springer Nature Limited. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory www.palgrave.com/journals