Rituals and spaces in innovative courts

ABSTRACT

Innovative justice forums form a small but important part of the justice landscape in Australia and elsewhere. These include many civil and protective tribunals, local dispute centres, special purpose courts like drug or Indigenous courts, restorative justice conferences and – particularly relevant to this special issue –neighbourhood justice centres. Innovative forums like these are designed to be problem-solving: the focus is on achieving outcomes that resolve the underlying issues. While the substantive results of any legal process are obviously important, one of the most ‘innovative’ features of innovative forums is the way they carry out their tasks. This paper examines the rituals and spaces of three innovative forums, examining in detail one case study from each: a Koori court hearing in a suburban Melbourne court, a family group conference in a suburban house in Dunedin, and a youth court preliminary hearing in the chambers of a juge des enfants in Paris. A comparison of the three hearings allows us to analyse the way spaces are managed and furniture organised, how authority is symbolised, how opening, closing and transitional ceremonies are arranged, and what sort of subjects are produced in the process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

David Tait is Professor of Justice Research in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney, and Professeur associé at Telecom ParisTech. His interests include court architecture, justice rituals, and technologies used in court and tribunal hearings. He has led five Australian Research Council projects in these areas together with scholars in architecture, psychology, law, forensic science and media studies. Current projects examine a youth Koori court, immersive video conferencing for court hearings and the use of cages or docks to contain defendants on trial. His most recent book is Juries Science and Popular Culture in the Age of Terror: the case of the Sydney Bomber, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, co-edited with Jane Goodman-Delahunty.

Notes

1 Parker (1998); Opeskin and Weisbrot (2005).

2 Carney and Tait (1997).

3 Foster (2013).

4 Sourdin (2008); Hensler (2003).

5 Brawn (2009).

6 Lederer (1998); Wallace (2008).

7 Freiburg (2001); Casey and Rottman (2005).

8 Daly and Hayes (2001); Consedine (1995).

9 Winick (1997).

10 Marchetti and Daly (2007).

11 Daly (2016).

12 Carroll (2011); Coker (2006) cited in Daly and Marchetti (2012).

13 Carney and Tait (1998).

14 Daly and Marchetti (2012).

15 Neighbourhood Justice Centre (2012).

16 Ross (2015).

17 Morgan and Brown (2015).

18 Booth et al (2012).

19 These were observed through context-specific consent processes. The adult Koori court hearing was an open and public hearing observed with participants’ permission; the New Zealand family group conference was observed with the verbal consent of all participants on the day; and the French children’s court hearing was observed within the framework of the Institut des hautes etudes de la justice, of which the author is an associate, and followed the IHEJ’s conventions around research conduct.

20 See Herrenschmidt et al (2016).

21 See Taylor (1993).

22 See Weijers (2002).

23 Scheff et al (2015).

24 Goffman (1967).

25 Tait (2001).

26 Garfinkel (1956); Goffman (1959).

27 Jacob (1994); Carlen (1976); Taylor (1993); see also Gelinas et al (2014); Garapon (2001).

28 Carney and Tait (1997); Tait and Carney (2013); Tait (2003).

29 Marchetti and Daly (2007); Havemann (1999).

30 Fitzgerald (2008).

31 Marchetti and Daly (2007); Aquilina et al (2009); Borowski (2010); Marchetti (2017).

32 Much of this interpretation comes from a year-long evaluation of the Youth Koori Court in Parramatta, in which the author was member of the research team (see Williams et al 2017).

33 Williams et al (2017).

34 Dickson (2011).

35 Bugmy v The Queen [2013] HCA 37.

36 Anthony et al (2015).

37 Daly and Hayes (2001).

38 Rossner et al (2013).

39 Personal details have been changed to protect the identities of the boys and their families. In both cases, the hearings were private, and permission of all parties was given to permit observations.

40 Carney et al (2008).

41 Feeley (1979).

42 Rossner (2013).

43 Ricoeur (1991).

44 See Turner and Schechner (1988).

45 Rossner and Tait (2011).

46 Goffman (1967).

47 Bourdieu (1981).

48 Weijers (2002).

49 Weijers (2002).

50 Bourquin (2007).

51 Brink (2002).

52 Spaulding (2012); Mulcahy (2007).