Backdoor Broadcasting Company

Event Date: 21 October 2011
14:00 – 17:00
Room G16, Birkbeck Main Building 
Birkbeck, 
University of London 
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

Visions of the Trial: Courts and Visual Culture

Speakers:

Leif Dahlberg (BIH Visiting Fellow/Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan, Stockholm)
The uses and effects of video technology on social interaction and legal space in the Swedish Court of Appeal
[AUDIO HERE]

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Leslie J Moran (Birkbeck)
Watching the judiciary
[AUDIO HERE]

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Barbara Villez (Professor of Legal Languages and Cultures, University Vincennes-St Denis/Paris 8
Telephone camera technology and courtroom images
[AUDIO HERE]

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questions and discussion

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Event Date: 21 October 2011

Visions of the Trial: Courts and Visual Culture

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Leslie J Moran (Birkbeck)
Watching the judiciary

From the 18th century surveillance of the judiciary has been a preoccupation of those seeking to ensure that justice is not only done but is seen to be done. If in the past this scrutiny was undertaken in the published text of the judgment and the space of the courtroom since at least the end of the 19th century the press have also played a major role. From the 1920’s this has been performed under a general prohibition banning camera technology from the courtroom.
This prohibition is often interpreted as bringing to an end the role of visual images in bringing the courts and judiciary to account. This paper challenges that assumption and explores the role visual images have played in judicial scrutiny under this regime of visual censorship. It is based upon a study of contemporary English press reports that use visual images in reports of court and judicial activity. The analysis is undertaken with an eye on the wider visual cultural profile of the judiciary.

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