ABSTRACT
In this chapter I look at the origins of current ideas about modern court design. Central to my argument is the observation that as the organisation of society has moved from one based on the ideals of feudalism to those of a representative democracy the arrangement of the courthouse has, somewhat paradoxically, become increasingly hierarchical and discourses of containment and surveillance more pervasive. I attempt to chart the ways in which court architecture has become increasingly segmented and the public space of the courthouse less accessible to lay participants in the trial. Analysis of architectural plans and historical records provide a number of indications of the ways in which changing notions of privacy and due process have prompted the development of complex spatial confi gurations in the courtroom which can be seen as running counter to debates about the civil liberties of the defendant or the importance of publicity in the trial. In this chapter and the two which follow, it will become clear that current ways of thinking about how and why the interiors of courthouses and courtrooms should be partitioned into zones, and movement within them restricted, have come about as a result of turf wars about who can legitimately participate on the legal stage and the respect which should be afforded them. I suggest that the containment of the public, the fortifi cation of the dock, the increasing amount of space allocated to advocates, and the creation of dedicated space for journalists all have complex histories which deserve to be charted and discussed more extensively than they have been to date. In contrast to a vision of adjudicatory space as neutral this chapter argues that understanding the geopolitics of the courtroom is crucial to a broader and more nuanced understanding of the history of the trial. The spatial is clearly open to, and a necessary element in, the socio-legal dynamics of the trial. Each time a partition is created it has the effect of creating an inside and outside; an ‘opposition’ or other which can serve to signal status, place, inequality or sanctuary. Viewed from this perspective, the suggestion that space is fundamental in any exercise of power by ensuring a certain allocation of people in space and a coding of their reciprocal relations is a compelling one (see Foucault 1984; Massey 2005). It would seem then that space
is very far from being a fl at, immobilised surface. The space-place dynamic is particularly striking when one considers that in the modern court space ostensibly designated ‘public’ is in fact divided into a series of private spheres which are not accessible to all.
