Courts in a Time of Permacrisis: Knowing Justice (Digitally) in the Anthropocene

As we navigate the Anthropocene, we find ourselves in an era of permacrisis - a time of continuous and overlapping crises which have a global as well as national impact.

As the ecological event horizon approaches the societal imperative is to reshape and redirect our activities, but this puts us into conflict with our boundaries of sovereignty and culture, challenging our understandings of justice, and our confidence in the rule of law.

The ways in which we access justice must evolve and advances in digital technologies promise greater accessibility to justice at less cost. However, the recent pandemic has shown that less engagement diminishes the rule of law and our confidence in it.

We know justice and the rule of law through the social and cultural life of law; through the court as the place of law with its aesthetics, architecture and artefacts, and the rituals and performative traditions of the trial. As our courts become digitised, we do not yet understand the impact of digitisation on this ‘knowing’.

Matthews[1] argues that through an attention to obligations, rather than rights, a sensitivity to the forces and relations that define the Anthropocene might be fostered. This implies a shift of emphasis from the aesthetics to the aesthesis of the human experience. This paper argues that aesthesis is a key element of knowing justice and extends the argument to propose that the integrity of the criminal trial therefore relies on the physical presence of the people at its centre. It follows that an anthropological analysis of the architectural phenomenology of the trial courts can helps us to know justice (digitally).

[1] Matthews, D. (2023). Law and Aesthetics in the Anthropocene: From the Rights of Nature to the Aesthesis of Obligations. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 19(2), 227-247.