Beneath the Courthouse: A critical phenomenology of judicial space

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Foregrounding the way disadvantaged litigants experience the architectural features, organisational practices andgeography of London's courthouses, this transdisciplinary project gives new meaning to questions of culturalmarginalisation and our surroundings. Whilst central to the real and allegorical traversal of law, courthouses havebeen neglected against the spectacle of adjudication and statute. I ask whether these distinct places mighttogether constitute material legal infrastructure which subordinates the marginalised, restoring this idea of judicialspace to conversations around accessing, being alienated by, and receiving unequal versions of, justice. Throughphenomenological interview and theoretical analysis, Beneath the Courthouse tests this theory by speaking tolitigants about their experiences with law's embodiment. Doing so critically, it offers insight into marginality, ourcultural value system and its concretisation, what judicial space is and what it might become.