Virtual Justice

This presentation will examine the relationship between architectural design, due process and dignity in a digital age. Drawing on extensive research about the history of court design, it considers what courthouses are intended to symbolise, the effect they are intended to have on the many publics that use them and the sorts of behaviour they seek to facilitate.  These issues have become particularly interested in the aftermath of a series of recent reforms to the court estate which have heralded in online dispute resolution, trials in which key participants attend by video-link as well as virtual courts.  This lecture will consider the implications of the de-materialisation of the courthouse for the place of law in the civic landscape and legal imagination.