Judges as Architects

Social Science Research Network, 2014

In several countries, governments have embarked on major building expansion programs for their judiciaries. The new buildings posit the courtroom as their center and the judge as that room's pivot. These contemporary projects follow the didactic path laid out in Medieval and Renaissance town halls, which repeatedly deployed symbolism in efforts to shape norms. Dramatic depictions then reminded judges to be loyal subjects of the state. In contrast, modern buildings narrate not only the independence of judges but also the dominion of judges, insulated from the state. The signi fi cant allocation of public funds re fl ects the prestige accorded to courts by governments that dispatch world-renowned architects to design these icons of the state. The investment in spectacular structures represents a tribute to the judiciary but should also serve as a reminder of courts' dependency on other branches of government, which authorize budgets and shape jurisdictional authority. A double narrative comes as well from the design choices. The frequent reliance on glass facades is explained as denoting the accessibility and transparency of the law. But courthouse interiors tell another story, in which segregated passageways ("les trois fl ux") have become the norm, devoting substantial space and cost to isolating participants from each other. Further, administrative of fi ces consume the largest percentage of the Chapter 23

Law & Literature, 25,1 pp. 122-130, Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University.

This book is a stimulating and provocative essay as well as a richly documented study, ranging from Antiquity to new contemporary art and design for today's courts. The scope of the book is transnational and transhistorical; Art is understood in the widest possible way: its goes from Shamash, Mâat, Dikè , and Themis to the vengeful Justice by Mexican muralists, from functional Nkisi figures to ornamental tapestries, from symbolic art (emblems, medals, artifacts) to aniconic or abstract representations of Justice. Because Justice is soon embodied in its very architecture (the motive of the Templum Justitiae), court architecture receives particular attention. Incursions into the world of institutional logos also enable the reader to reflect on communicative and corporate iconic practices.

Czasopismo Techniczne. Architektura, 2016

GRAżYNA HRYNCEWICZ-LAMBER * (IL)LEGIBLE GAME OF CONNOTATIONS? commEnts on thE rEprEsEntation oF justicE in architEcturE (NIE)CZYTELNA GRA ZNACZEń ? uwagi na tEmat rEprEzEntacji iDEi SPRAWIEDLIWOŚCI W ARCHITEKTURZE a b s t r a c t The facades of palaces of justice (not always intentionally) reflect the meaning attributed to those buildings. Judicial pride aims to immortalize power, administrative efficiency and humanistic openness here gains a specific expression. Despite the fact that justice procedures seem difficult and obscure, one of the fundamental principles of a fair trial is the principle of democratic transparency of proceedings, embodied strongly in the architecture of constitutional courts.

Architecture organizes and structures space, making it intelligible, understandable, and capable of being interpreted, inasmuch as the exterior and interior, as well as the materials and objects present therein, can facilitate or inhibit our activities through how they imply and represent certain messages. In the particular case of courthouses—the spaces of justice and of judgment—we stand in front of specific places (courtrooms, offices, corridors and circulations, detention zones, and waiting areas, sometimes also known as the famous salles des pas perdus), with a particular organization of the entire building around the courtroom, seen as the heart or the node of this type of architectural building. For more than two centuries, courthouse architecture was dominated by an official and recognizable type of building (the Temple of Justice first, and later on the Palais de Justice). In contemporary times, however, since there are no longer static aesthetic rules/norms, the new courthouse buildings need to be simultaneously functional, open, and monumental. This requirement to represent and materialize justice in democracy is, nevertheless, difficult and contradictory.

Law & Social Inquiry, 2012

Legal Studies

Liverpool Law Review, 2017

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Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1983

The i6 years of labor that George Edmund Street devoted to the Royal Courts of Justice were filled with artistic and political controversy. Amidst that turmoil Street created a design whose pragmatism and visual logic marked the end of the intensely intellectual, High Victorian phase of the Gothic Revival. "Without it," Robert Kerr concluded in 1884, "the whole process of the Revival had been quite incomplete." The competition GEORGE EDMUND STREET invested a young lifetime of thinking in the competition conducted in 1866-1867 for the Royal Courts of Justice, and he must have found it a chastening experience. The design that he hung with those of the other ten entrants in the temporary exhibition building in Lincoln's Inn was meant to fulfill what he had long believed to be the intellectual challenge of High Victorian architecture: the adaptation of medievalism to the urban and secular needs of the i9th century (Fig. i). While the Gothic Revival of the I84os had already claimed churches and rural dwellings as its own, it was left for This essay is dedicated to John Coolidge, with feelings of professional respect and personal gratitude.

This essay studies in detail, for the first time and in the context of legal as well as art history, Sir Joshua Reynolds's representation of Justice (1779). We argue that the image is of particular significance in the history of representations of justice, and marks the emergence of neoclassical ideals. These ideals became, for example in the work of Sir William Blackstone, central to the development of Anglo-American concepts of the common law. We argue that Reynolds's work exemplifies a profound shift and a rich complexity in these concepts. Our study also reveals the ways in which the artist's aesthetic practice and precedents gave him unique insights into the form and ideas of Justice. More than this, we suggest that the relationship between legal ideas and portraiture is suggestive for how the relationship between abstract norms and individual cases ought to be mediatedboth in the formative period of the late eighteenth century, and now. The connection between law and art helps not only to clarify but to develop and more richly comprehend both the history and the implications of legal concepts. Not in philosophy or jurisprudence or political theory is justice's struggle between particular and general most productively encountered, but in the dual cases of portraiture and common law. , Vox: +1 613 8844573.