Courthouse architecture and access to law and justice: the case of family and child courts in Portugal
The discourse of law, associated, since positivism, to the written code, the technical and formal language, can be made through other “materials”, made up of non-verbal sequences and artefacts (Santos; Villegas, 2001). According to Jacob (1995), architecture is an essential component of the image of justice, whose symbolism allows establishing a distance, more or less reduced, with citizens. Thus, the first step of justice is to outline a space where rules are defined, goals are set, and actors are established (Garapon, 1997). On one hand it is difficult to define the judicial institution, on the other hand we know one when we see it (Brigham, 1996), for we recognize a court when we recognize its building and its symbols – few are the public buildings that have a significance as strong as those of justice (Patterson, 2004). Moreover, a court is not only a set of rooms, corridors or entrances; it is above all a social and emotional space where the physical organization of the space transmits non-verbal messages of social and psychological content to its users. The walls, the shape of the courtroom, the positioning of the furniture and even the choice of materials, have crucial importance to access law and justice (Mulcahy, 2007). In this sense, we claim that theories, conceptions and representations of law, of justice and of the administration of justice are the main factors behind the conception and transformation of the judiciary spaces. The space where justice is administered (whether the tree of justice or the house of justice within the medieval markets, or the distant neoclassic palace of justice or the contemporary justice campus) is always the result of the dominant conceptions of law and justice, of sovereignty and of State, thus influencing the architectural program of a court. The study of the evolution and configuration of these spaces allows us to determine the characteristics of the relations between citizens, law and justice in every society. To verify this line of research, one specific area of law will be addressed, because of its special characteristics that deepen the connections between courthouse architecture and justice: family and child law, which is called upon today to answer to new problems, with still blurred contours that exist between a tendency to privatization/negotiation and a tendency to (re)publicization, namely in the field of new conjugalities and the promotion of children’s rights (Commaille, 1991; Pocar; Ronfani, 2008). Thus, the need to analyse the spaces of justice arises in rich and complex areas such as those of families and children, in which interaction with the judicial system is associated with invasion of private life, the fragility and the emotion, as a result not only of the respective type of cause/law suit, but also of the relationship with a court’s space. We intent to analyse the spaces of Portuguese Family and Child Courts and understand whether or not concepts of sovereignty, negotiation, access to law and justice, effectiveness and citizenship were present during their conception or adjustment. Departing from these concepts, we will try to determine whether or not the space of justice is more distant/closer and/or effective/ineffective in the communication of law. This type of study has been absent from the current debate in Portugal, both in legal theory and in social sciences, and is all the more meaningful at a moment when a new judiciary map takes place, one that aims at achieving efficiency, through a rationalized and specialized management of courts. The functions of justice have evolved, which is why we ask ourselves whether the new functions of law and justice (especially in an area such as that of family and children) can still be accommodated within the old architectural symbolism or whether new symbols will be needed. Thus, it is necessary to assess the studies conducted in other countries (such as France or Australia), in order to apply them in Portugal, interpreting the way in which the spaces of Portuguese justice have been/are conceived considering its functions, either by the political system, by those that conceived them, or by those that experience them (both as a professional and a user). In order to do that, the research group resorts to interdisciplinarity, bringing together elements from law and social sciences, family studies, conflict resolution and access to justice. This study intends to question this problematic and offer a theoretical contribution towards the issue of current Portuguese courthouse architecture, as well as future, through the elaboration of suggestions about design, organization and functionality of the courts´ spaces, particularly within the area of family and children, as spaces capable of assuring their users´ privacy, as well as guranteeing the effectiveness of law and justice.
Workshop; advanced training course; international conference.