Socio-Legal Discussion Group: (Im)mobilities: Courtroom Movement as Cultural Technique

In the Anglosphere, Cornelia Vismann’s work has had considerable impact upon Critical Legal Studies and Law and the Humanities. So too, more recently, Socio-Legal Studies has been influenced by her work on legal materiality, the archive, and the file. However, Socio-Legal scholars have yet to draw in depth upon her broader oeuvre. As we increasingly turn in our encounters with law towards the empirical study of corporeality, sensoriality, affect, and beyond, I seek to reassess Vismann’s critical contributions to our understanding of courtrooms as spaces of legal performance. Specifically, I look to the ‘cultural techniques’ of law’s enactment – courtroom layout, furniture, legal artefacts, and media technologies – insofar as they govern our physical movement ‘before the law’.