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City/Courthouse Building: A Mirror Game. Examining Connections Between Courthouse Buildings and Location in the Urban Environment

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Abstract

Courthouses are one of the founding pillars of the modern rule of law, being a sovereign body. But courthouses are not just buildings where justice is applied, administered, and written. From Max Weber on, courts have been associated with the urban dimension and the place they occupy in the geography of the cities. As in a mirror game, both city and court building look at each other, both shape each other, they belong to one another. And yet, how often do we think of their intimate interactions? Having this in mind, and by examining a number of geographically disparate cases, I intend to discuss correlated variations of the mirror game between city and courthouse building, where variables such as ‘the proxemics of the courthouse’, the (dis)alignment amid centre and periphery, ‘the sense of loss’ and the significance of control/discipline will be central to comprehend the ‘court/city’ narratives involved. Such semiotic analysis aims to foster reflection on the socio-political weight the location of the court—the connections of the building (comprising its architecture) and the city—may express. I conclude by arguing that courthouse buildings must rediscover their place and legitimacy, not only in the community’s collective imagination, but also in the urban space, promoting a closer dialogue with the cities in which they operate, as essential axes of city life. Particularly at a time when the likely way forward suggests a digital trajectory, possibly without the need for buildings.

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Fig. 1

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Justice_postcard.jpg

Fig. 2

Source: By Armando Mancini—Flickr: Napoli—Castel Capuano, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16286533

Fig. 3

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Centro_Direzionale_di_Napoli.jpg

Fig. 4

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_du_Palais_de_Justice.jpg

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Notes

  1. The location of the South African’s Constitutional Court is a good example in this context: the court’s complex sits on the remnants of the Old Fort Prison, Johannesburg’s notorious prison, where Nelson Mandela, and other Apartheid resisters, were imprisoned [49]. The court’s location re-anchors this institution not only in a defined space but also in history.

  2. In the rural areas of the United States, the monthly court appointments, during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, provided an opportunity for the local communities to meet, as the courthouse was generally located at the heart of the commercial centers of the towns, making attendance accessible both to town and countryside folks [53, 54]. More than any other building of that period, the courthouse represented civic life for the inhabitants of the city.

  3. Cf. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/01/bilbao-effect-frank-gehry-guggenheim-global-craze. Accessed 07 March 2019.

  4. See https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao. Accessed 07 March 2019.

  5. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Lyman_Morse_United_States_Courthouse. Accessed 07 March 2019.

  6. Cf. https://rm.coe.int/16807482cb. Accessed 19 February 2019.

  7. The courthouse’s architectural program has ‘traveled’ with the colonial project as well, on the one hand. On the other hand, in present times, there is a global market for architecture and so architectural trends have globalized. Furthermore, there is this notion, as Ahl and Tiebsen have described for the Chinese context [1, p. 620], that using western, and particularly European, architectural elements makes courts “appear to comply with international models of influential and independent judicial institutions”.

  8. See https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/Jo2_25536/en/. Accessed 19 February 2019.

  9. The same can be said of Strasbourg and of this city’s ties to the European Court of Human Rights, designed by Richard Rogers in 1994, a building well-known around the world. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights_building#/media/File:14-02-06-Parlement-europ%C3%A9en-Strasbourg-RalfR-003.jpg. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  10. See http://www.df.gov.br/supremo-tribunal-federal/. Accessed 19 February 2019.

  11. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Israel#/media/File:Israel_Supreme_Court.jpg. Accessed 19 February 2019.

  12. The notion of justice without walls, however, is not a revolutionary or original one. Actually, when we think of the courthouse building, we tend to think of it from a Western point of view, in terms of buildings designed and constructed according to an architectural project and functional program. But we must also consider other latitudes where the spaces of justice are not made of buildings. This is what is still happening in many places in the Amazonia region, for example, where justice is itinerant and uses boats to reach the more distanced populations [16].

  13. See https://www.trc.pt/index.php/o-palacio-da-justica. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  14. See http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/architetture/schede/3m080-00054/. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  15. Cf. https://rm.coe.int/16807482cb. Accessed 19 February 2019.

  16. See http://www.apij.justice.fr/nos-projets/les-operations-judiciaires/palais-de-justice-de-paris-ile-de-la-cite/. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  17. Cf. http://www.nouveaupalaisdejustice.fr/projet_zac_batignolles.php. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  18. Denouncing what they considered to be the unjustifiable cost of the project, its futility, and the negative consequences for justice, the association promoted a number of appeals to the Paris Administrative Court. Cf. http://www.cercle-du-barreau.org/archive/2008/11/26/transfert-du-palais-suite.html. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  19. Cf. http://www.karmarchitettura.it/2012/03/nuovo-palazzo-di-giustizia-rpbw-renzo.html. This is the author’s translation. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  20. Cf. http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/tribunal-de-paris/15851. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  21. Cf. https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/02/17/renzo-piano-poete-civil_1644498_3246.html. Accessed 14 March 2019.

  22. Cf. http://www.rpbw.com/project/paris-courthouse. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  23. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_riots. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  24. Cf. http://www.rpbw.com/project/paris-courthouse. Accessed 28 February 2019.

  25. Cf. https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/02/17/renzo-piano-poete-civil_1644498_3246.html. Accessed 14 March 2019.

  26. See https://www.archdaily.com/61643/city-of-justice-barcelona-l%25e2%2580%2599hospitalet-de-llobregat-david-chipperfield-b720. Accessed 13 March 2019.

  27. Cf. https://www.direttanews.it/2013/09/13/chiusi-mille-sedi-giudiziarie-citta-in-rivolta/. Accessed 07 March 2019.

  28. Cf. https://www.tempi.it/i-funerali-della-capitanata-storia-del-tribunale-di-lucera/#.VsrjW33hDcs.Accessed 07 March 2019.

  29. Cf. https://bari.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/05/28/foto/tribunale-197546063/1/#31. Accessed 13 March 2019.

  30. For an accurate account of the situation, see the Italian TV news program Presa Diretta (RAI3), first aired on January 2019, titled “La vicenda del Palazzaccio di Bari”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6gipfw79XA. Accessed 13 March 2019.

  31. Let us look at the Portuguese example, as well: following the implementation of the judicial organization in 2014, in some cities, as in Loures, near Lisbon, courthouse services were transferred to containers, near the courthouse building, as in a sort of ‘judicial favela’, not only transforming the urban landscape around the place of justice, but what is more, disrupting the link between the city, legal subjects, and their court. Again, a sense of shame was expressed in relation to the city and its court. See, for example, https://www.publico.pt/2014/09/25/sociedade/noticia/ratos-e-infiltracoes-nos-contentores-no-tribunal-de-loures-1670797. Accessed 14 March 2019.

  32. Cf. https://www.corriere.it/cronache/18_luglio_02/bari-citta-senza-tribunale-smontata-tendopoli-palagiustizia-58cfd924-7d5e-11e8-b995-fbeecea523fe.shtml. Accessed 14 March 2019.

  33. Cf. http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/cronache/bari-tribunale-penale-lascia-sede-storica-1626060.html. Accessed 14 March 2019.

  34. In this respect, and acknowledging the increasing importance of artificial intelligence in the justice systems, the CEPEJ has recently adopted the “European Ethical Charter on the use of AI in the judicial systems and their environment” (December of 2018). See https://www.coe.int/en/web/cepej/cepej-european-ethical-charter-on-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-judicial-systems-and-their-environment. Accessed 19 April 2019.

  35. The JUSTICE report [37], « What is a Court? » , makes a very interesting suggestion: the creation of five different types of spaces of justice - Flagship Justice Centres, local Justice Centres, ‘Pop-up’ courts, Remote access to justice facilities, and Digital justice spaces.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Valerio Nitrato Izzo for the comments and suggestions made to an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the pertinent suggestions made.

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This publication is supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the Strategic Project UID/SOC/50012/2019.

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Branco, P. City/Courthouse Building: A Mirror Game. Examining Connections Between Courthouse Buildings and Location in the Urban Environment. Int J Semiot Law 32, 597–620 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-019-09622-7

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