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The rapid increase in the use of remote platforms in court hearings has fundamentally changed the nature of hearings and produced a productive point of reflection for digital and legal geographies. This paper uses geographical theorisations of space to make sense of digital developments in court space. It proposes that the introduction of remote platforms generates three spatial ruptures in court hearings: the space of remote hearings is dispersed across multiple sites, stretched into non‐traditional justice spaces, and sometimes snapped back into the physical hearing centre. Analysing these spatial ruptures through ethnographic research conducted in immigration bail hearings in the UK offers insights into the relationship between physical and virtual hearing spaces. Specifically, it reveals three things about this relationship: that physical and virtual hearing spaces are relational; that remoteness does not annihilate hearing space; and that remoteness can be best understood as existing on a continuum. In doing so, this paper seeks to bring legal geography's well‐developed understanding of court space into conversation with recent digital developments in courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Court ethnographies have commonly relied on the physical presence of the ethnographers. This paper explores the opportunities and the challenges of conducting court ethnographies without this physical presence. Specifically, it examines what it means to conduct remote ethnographies of legal processes where neither the ethnographer nor the other hearing participants are physically co‐present. The sudden shift towards remote hearings in fieldwork conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic presented an opportunity to compare in‐person and remote ethnographic methods. Through a case study of bail hearings in the immigration tribunal in the UK, this paper explores the value and challenges associated with conducting remote ethnographies and asks how they can help to shed light on the impact of absences in legal events. Court ethnographies have commonly relied on the physical presence of the ethnographers. This paper explores the opportunities and the challenges of conducting court ethnographies without this physical presence. Specifically, it examines what it means to conduct remote ethnographies of legal processes where neither the ethnographer nor the other hearing participants are physically co‐present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sets out what courtwatching is and gives some examples from various countries. It argues that a closer engagement with courtwatching in legal geography will yield insights into the issues of visibility, publicness, witnessing, and embodiment that surround court observations. Courtwatching involves grassroots efforts to observe the day‐to‐day work of decision making in justice systems, usually undertaken by activists as a way to scrutinise and challenge the power of legal professionals such as judges. This paper argues for closer attention to courtwatching in legal geographical research. Numerous courtwatching programmes exist around the world, and the first part of the paper surveys some of these, giving a sense of their diversity, the challenges they can face, and the influence that they have. The second part of the paper uses courtwatching to explore questions of visibility, publicness, witnessing, and embodiment in legal research into courts, trials, and hearings. It argues that courtwatching highlights the complexity of legal publicness, problematising the binary notion of "closed" or "open" hearings, and also raises important questions about the ethical differences between watching and witnessing. Finally, in the context of proliferating ways in which courts are becoming public via digital means of watching, such as TV and podcasts, the paper asks what difference it makes to actually be there, in the flesh, to watch legal processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift towards dispute resolution taking place outside traditional legal arenas is fundamentally changing the relationship between space and law, presenting legal geography with pressing new research opportunities. This paper explores how the emerging geographies of publicness, materiality, access to justice and communication shed light on the consequences of alternative and online dispute resolution. Crucially, these consequences raise urgent interdisciplinary questions for geography and law. We set out these questions and suggest that legal geography will be best placed to address them by working through some of the practical, applied ramifications of its concepts and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]