Courts: In and Out of Sight, Site, and Cite
40 Pages Posted: 1 Apr 2010 Last revised: 7 Feb 2011
Date Written: 2008
Abstract
This lecture addresses how traditions of adjudication influenced democratic values, and how contemporary democracies have transformed but failed to make good on adjudication’s promises. I trace the shift from Renaissance “rites” and spectacles of power to post-enlightenment “rights” or open courts and impartial judges. After mapping the expansion and “triumph” of adjudication, represented through the building of courts as purpose-built and segregated space, I detail its decline. Through contemporary outsourcing, devolution, and privatization of court processes, the public dimensions of adjudication are diminishing. In the 1840s, Jeremy Bentham based his call for “publicity” in courts on claims of accuracy and legitimacy; I will argue that, for the twenty-first century, adjudication is itself a democratic practice and can serve democratic ends, and hence, that its decline is a problem for democracies.
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