Abstract
Legal Architecture is welcome, timely, and impressively ambitious in its scope. It charts the evolution of judicial facilities in Britain from the earliest times to the present. It also addresses some rapidly emerging dynamics and technology-driven possibilities that are posing profound challenges to the ways that justice is delivered now.
The author’s approach is bold in its attempt to rise above the often fragmented and uneven ways that courthouse planning and design are handled in both discussions of historical developments and descriptions of how to approach new judicial projects today. Mulcahy is correct when noting the ironic paucity of material on a subject that is otherwise of first importance. This lack of an extensive body of literature is a comment on the complexity of the issues involved and of the need to examine them from more perspectives than most individual observers can command.
The design and delivery of judicial brick and mortar are generally shot full of challenges so steep and varied that it is a wonder when a courthouse project emerges successfully from the gauntlet of competing priorities and byzantine procurement processes that it has to pass through. Public policy makers, justice system professionals, planners, and designers – the building owners, users, architects, and engineers that need to work together to produce a good result – speak different languages. Harmony can be elusive.
After staking out the history of space dedicated to justice, Legal Architecture turns to consider the formal design guidelines and priorities that govern how judicial facilities are conceived and procured now. The complexity of the subject, vast time frame, and myriad players involved make it inevitable that some unevenness and arguable observations emerge along the way. Parts of the discussion are vulnerable to critical sniping from its flanks. But the overall spirit and main thrust of the analysis are a valuable contribution to our understanding of issues that are becoming more acute.
The first several chapters trace the evolution of court space over many centuries from ancient times and then the medieval period on, noting how the physical settings of the trial reflected evolving conceptions of justice and the status of the individual. The settings varied widely. Open fields, the shade canopy of large trees, and interior spaces that served multiple purposes with varying degrees of enclosure – all were used as the places where judgments about guilt or innocence could be rendered. It is a fascinating story that is thoroughly bound up with huge dynamics, from the growth of centralized power and secularization to the emergence of new social structures and class conflict.
The story takes an important turn into the modern period by the late 18th century and the emergence of purpose-built structures made specifically for the conduct of trials. Whereas generic spaces and even portable accommodations had sufficed for the meting out of the law until that time, dedicated spaces and a more standardized approach to the configuration of courtroom elements – judge’s bench, juror seating, spectator area, and so on – emerged along with growth and increasing codification of the law itself. The evolving architectural assertion of authority in this period also saw the development of the prisoner dock. A new feature, the dock was a conspicuously standalone element in the courtroom where the accused no longer shared space with his counsel directly. Instead, the accused found himself in a fishbowl-like setting that persists in courtroom design to this day. The author contends throughout the book that the dock is a wrong-headed and subversive element that undermines the presumption of innocence.
The discussion of the 19th century is particularly informative. The period is breathtaking for the transformative power, pace, and pervasiveness of forces that coursed through it. Britain attained global military preeminence after Trafalgar and Waterloo, experienced industrialization and the growth of the working classes in burgeoning red brick cities, passed the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 that arguably spared it, if only barely, from the revolutionary tremors that toppled governments on the continent, and witnessed the ascendance of a confident middle class in charge of an often rapacious capitalism.
The legal system in this environment was refined and extended to keep pace with the growth of commerce, new forms of litigation, and the management of disputes involving workers. Economic and social transformation was profound. At the same time, the physical, brick and mortar infrastructure of justice was enlarged and enhanced by the construction of new courthouses. A number of grand courthouse buildings in urban areas asserted the primacy of the law and its alliance with the interests of the free market and industrial classes. These architectural ‘monuments to law’ dignified legal proceedings, while, at the same time, casting an imposing shadow of ‘authority over the threatening masses’.
With the codification and refinement of the law, and architectural expressions of civic grandeur, came increased repression. The dark side of the story, the author tells, saw the litigant increasingly constrained and marginalized by the architecture of the buildings and the layout of the courtrooms. Mulcahy’s discussion of some of the great courthouses during what she describes as the ‘heyday of courthouse design’ (p. 112) in the 19th century emphasizes the dual nature of the buildings as sources of both civic pride and social repression.
The early 20th century through the depression years of the interwar period is discussed briefly as a time in which little took place to alter the brick and mortar of justice. But the years immediately following World War II saw the beginnings of what would become a sea change in the courts system. Mulcahy discusses the governmental reviews and restructuring of the system and the emergence of a commitment to upgrade and rationalize it with a massive court’s construction program that lasted into the 1970s. The scope of the construction effort and the role of various organizations and commissions in it remind the reader of what an enormous challenge Britain had to face in the postwar period.
The harsh irony now in retrospect is that the bulk of the new building stock of courthouses throughout the country was completed before the sudden influx of electronics-based technologies that began flooding into courthouse design in the 1990s. The impact of these technologies has been and continues to be profound; they have steadily scrambled many established ideas about courthouse space ever since. It is not unusual today to see courthouse buildings that were constructed scarcely 25 years ago now rendered functionally substandard by new court technologies.
Mulcahy’s review of current courthouse design and construction processes cites the role played by the government’s ‘Design Guidelines’, a recently updated 1000+ page document containing prescriptive and performance-based criteria that courthouse architects are to meet when engaged in new projects. She argues that despite attempts to convey the latest and best thinking about design issues, the guidelines remain flawed with respect to some fundamental values. They continue to specify an isolating prisoner dock, for example, that in effect casts the shadow of doubt over the presumed innocence of the prisoner before the case is even heard. They also marginalize the role of the spectators in the proceedings and reflect what she believes is an ongoing distrust of the public. Mulcahy suggests throughout the text that spectators are treated as ‘docile bodies’ rather than ‘active participants’ (see especially Chapter 5). These and related design issues in the courtroom, combined with similarly problematic things in spaces elsewhere in the courthouse, are cited to contest the idea that current design guidelines have reached a state of perfection. The author argues instead that courthouse planning and design remains unduly frozen in outdated thinking and that it continues to be an essay in the architecture of fear. Indeed, courthouse architecture is characterized as having been complicit oftentimes in the development of designs that are repressive.
The concluding chapter is a bold and prescient consideration of emerging technologies and ‘virtualized’ courtroom proceedings. The author addresses the possible dematerialization of courtroom space when virtualized proceedings enable the parties in a dispute to interact via video link or even, in some futurist scenarios, as hovering holograms. It would be difficult to overstate the impact on courts design of electronics-based technologies. They are increasingly powerful, seductive, and essential to court systems that are otherwise being overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of workload demands. The author reviews current research and applications of display technology in the courtroom, notably the pioneering work done at Courtroom 21 at the College of William and Mary School of Law in Virginia, USA, and she understands the existing and anticipated abilities of technology to replace physical courtroom space with interaction that is mediated through a computer screen. Importantly, however, she rejects virtualized proceedings when the litigant’s liberty is at stake, at least, and argues forcefully for the continued reliance upon true face-to-face interaction. Legal Architecture argues that something real and indispensable to the pursuit of justice is sacrificed when direct, face-to-face encounters in a courtroom are rendered a thing of the past.
The author’s strong call by the end of the book is twofold. She believes that the government’s Design Guidelines for courthouses today are not as creative and forward-looking as they should be, and she argues for reaching beyond them. At the same time, Legal Architecture is a plea for retaining and enhancing a judicial process that is as directly and authentically public as possible.
Some of the conclusions reached in the later portions of the book invite vigorous debate. One key question that this reviewer would have liked to have seen explored involves the funding strategies that the British government has embarked upon when procuring new courthouses. Alternative project procurement methods and the so-called public–private partnerships when financing new courthouse construction are alluded to briefly (pp. 147–148) without pausing to consider the potentially adverse effects they may be having on the design process and its outcomes.
The British have pioneered the development of alternative project procurement methods. Experiments in Canada and the United States with variations of British ideas on the public–private design/build/finance/operate theme are inconclusive at the moment, in this reviewer’s opinion, but they suggest so far that the strength of a project’s financial package is weighted more heavily than the quality of its design when selecting the team that is awarded the job. This emphasis on financing and its primacy over design has the potential to be highly problematic. The courthouse architect is hamstrung right away before the first line is drawn. In other words, courthouse project delivery methods, not design guidelines, may be the biggest obstacle to the kind of open and generous design that the author advocates.
Associated issues involving other court services and spaces are touched upon briefly but are left as additional questions that one hopes will be addressed in a sequel. Legal Architecture is a courtroom-centric analysis that begs to be complemented by a ‘whole building’ look at other areas and operations in the courthouse overall. The courtroom is the heart and soul of the building, but other functional areas are now becoming increasingly hot flash points, especially in facilities that offer a broad range of pretrial and post-adjudication services to large numbers of people. The diversity and volume of visitors that come to many courthouses today are creating unprecedented challenges for the design of the building as a whole.
A sequel to this study would also ideally address the challenges posed by the large inventory of existing courthouse building stock that needs to be upgraded and/or reprogrammed in order to remain serviceable at today’s standards. Most of tomorrow’s judicial infrastructure already exists today – some of it has been in place for a very long time – and the need to keep it going at acceptable performance levels is acute. How does one revitalize the large chunk of outdated brick and mortar that cannot be replaced wholesale with costly new construction? The author’s command of the issues addressed in the current study would enable her to bring extra insight into these parallel planning and design problems.
Legal Architecture is occasionally controversial in places, but it is an important contribution to a conversation about the physical infrastructure of justice – a conversation that has been far too limited and uneven to date. It is also very timely as real urgency has now burst in on the question of judicial facilities and how to make them what they need to be today and tomorrow. Too many courthouses are creaking with age and obsolete ideas as the demands being placed upon them and the justice system as a whole are increasing exponentially. Professor Mulcahy’s work is a fresh and vigorous call to keep thinking about the fundamentals of equal justice for all as new dynamics and possibilities intensify.