Representing Justice

The relationship between courts and democracy is the central question of this book. The authors explore the evolution of adjudication into its modern form by mapping the remarkable run of the political icon of Justice and by tracing the development of public spaces dedicated to justice-courthouses.

Resnik and Curtis analyze how Renaissance "rites" of judgment turned into democratic "rights," requiring governments to protect judicial independence and to provide open and public hearings. Courts developed, alongside the press and the postal services, as mechanisms for building the public sphere and for calling the government to account. During the twentieth century, all persons gained access to rights of fair treatment in courts.

Today, however, private processes are replacing public ones, as public and private sectors promote settlement, devolve decision-making to agencies, and outsource judgments to arbitrators and mediators. Often clad in glass to mark justice's transparency, new courthouse designs celebrate adjudication without reflecting on the problems of access, injustice, opacity, and the complexity of rendering impartial judgments.

With more than 220 images, readers can see both the longevity of aspirations for the Virtue Justice and the transformation of courts, as well as understand that, while venerable, courts are also vulnerable institutions that ought (like the post and the press) not be taken for granted. The argument is that the movement away from public adjudication is a problem for democracies because adjudication has important contributions to make to democracy.