LEGAL ARCHITECTURE: JUSTICE, DUE PROCESS AND THE PLACE OF LAW by LINDA MULCAHY: REPRESENTING JUSTICE: INVENTION, CONTROVERSY, AND RIGHTS IN CITY‐STATES AND DEMOCRATIC COURTROOMS by JUDITH RESNIK AND DENNIS CURTIS
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2012.00585.x |
| Author | KATHY MACK |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
LEGAL ARCHITECTURE: JUSTICE, DUE PROCESS AND THE PLACE
OF LAW by LINDA MULCAHY
(Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2011, xv + 204pp., £80.00 (hbk) £25.99
(pbk))
REPRESENTING JUSTICE: INVENTION, CONTROVERSY, AND RIGHTS
IN CITY-STATES AN D DEMOCRATIC COU RTROOMS by JUDITH
RESNIK AND DENNIS CURTIS
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011, xvii + 740pp.,
£50.00)
It is a delight to read serious, scholarly books about law and legal process
enriched with illustrations and descriptions enabling the reader to see,
literally and metaphorically, familiar settings in new and thought-provoking
ways. Lawyers and legal scholars are `obsess[ed] with the word'
1
and may,
therefore, be blind to the impact of the physical spaces in which law's power
is exercised.
The core subject of both books is similar: to examine courthouse design,
courtroom layouts, and associated images as physical manifestations of law,
justice, and power, especially the meanings of courts in a democracy. Each
book concludes with concern for a lack of effective public engagement with
modern legal process, especially adjudication, which is reflected in, and at
least partly caused by, courthouse and courtroom design, structure, and
decoration.
Each book contains overlapping narratives with fascinating detail about
courthouses, courtrooms, art and iconography of justice, and changes in law
and procedure over time. While each book makes a coherent argument as a
whole, each also contains chapters or groups of chapters that can be read as
stand-alone narratives.
Though broadly titled Legal Ar chitecture, Linda Mulcahy focuses
primarily on one court (the `criminal assizes') and one jurisdiction (England
and Wales) from the middle ages to the present. Her analysis links
increasingly hierarchical and segregated courtrooms and courthouses to
changes in legal procedure and to fear. Greater roles for legal practitioners
led to barriers within the courtroom and courthouse to demarcate their
professional space from the public. The desire to insulate legal elites also
reflected fear of the public sphere with its dirt, disorder and emotional
`unscripted performances'.
2
The result is that courtrooms and courthouses
are no longer ```open'' to the public in any meaningful way' and that
participatory justice is not now possible.
3
317
1 L. Mulcahy, Legal Architecture: Justice, Due Process and the Place of Law (2011) 3.
2 id., p. 83.
3 id.
ß2012 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2012 Cardiff University Law School
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