Visible justice: YouTube and the UK Supreme Court

The purpose of the article is to undertake a critical examination of a new audiovisual form of judicial communicati on developed by the UK Supreme Court. An audiovisual recording of the judge delivering a summary of the judgment now accompanies the publication of the full written judgment and a two page “ press summary ” of the judgment. The summary judgment video is avai lable for viewing on demand and at a distance via The Internet. The article begins by introducing the audiovisual data that makes up the video case study at the centre of this study and outlines the methods used to undertake the subsequent analysis. It is followed by a review of a number of fields of scholarship and debates that the study of these videos engages with: about cameras in courts; transparency and open justice; and news media representations of courts. A consideration of these literatures provid es an opportunity to identify and consider how this study helps to make sense of the Court’s video initiative. It also provides an opportunity to consider the contribution that this study can make to those areas of work. An analysis of the case study video s follows, beginning with a consideration of the representations of the court, the judge and judgment that are to be found in those videos. Attention then turns to study the some of the cultural assumptions and institutional factors that shape the visibili ty of judgment that the videos are generating. The paper ends with some reflections and conclusions about the nature of this visibility and the contribution that the summary judgment videos make to “ open justice ” and the “ transparency ” of the court; in par ticular the judiciary and judicial decision - making

What\u27s Home Got To Do With It? Kinship, Space, and the Case of Family, Spouse and Civil Partnership in the UK

The analysis that is offered in this Article has two dimensions. The first focuses upon the context in which the battle for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships has taken place. Using two key reported decisions from the U.K.\u27s final domestic court of appeal, Fitzpatrick v Sterling Housing and Ghaidan v Mendoza, the objective here is to explore the shifting terrain against which legal activism relating to the recognition of same-sex domestic relationships has achieved some success in the U.K. These two cases represent key developments in the judicial recognition of the rights of parties in same-sex domestic relationships. These cases have particular importance. In Fitzpatrick, the House of Lords decided that a same-sex couple\u27s relationship fell within the meaning of family. In Ghaidan the court decided that the term spouse was to be applied to same-sex couples. Some of the key legal effect

Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards: Measuring Leadership Life Skills and Youth-Adult Relationships.

This descriptive correlational study sought to measure the development of leadership life skills and the perceptions of youth-adult relationships by youth serving on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards. Members of the 2013-2014 Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards (N = 99) served as the population for the study. Overall, 4-H members who served on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards perceived they gained “a lot” of leadership life skills from their board involvement. Board members reported high levels of youth involvement, adult involvement, and youth-adult interaction. Based on the high levels of involvement and interaction, youth-adult partnerships were present on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards. The participants involved in this study and the total population of 4-H members is not concurrent with each other in terms of race or gender. Youth development professionals could vary the recruitment efforts of potential board members to include a more diverse pool of applicants. This could include widening the range of diverse adult sponsors. Future research should be conducted to determine if there is a difference in youth who serve on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards and other 4-H members who do not serve on the boards. No statistically significant relationship existed between development of leadership life skills and youth-adult partnerships. Future research should investigate the subject deeper to determine why in this study the leadership life skills and youth-adult partnerships had no significant relationship

Visual culture and the judiciary: the Judges’ service and breakfast

This working paper is made up of a selection of my photographic images of the annual ‘Judges Service’ at Westminster Abbey, on the 1st of October 2009. The service is ‘a private event’ marking the start of the UK legal year (see http://www.westminster-abbey.org/worship/special-services). The images I was able to make are limited to the arrival of judges at Westminster Abbey and their departure to the Palace of Westminster. Media photographers were allowed into the Abbey and images from inside were included in news media reports. See for example http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article/article-1217459 The Parliament website explains, ‘The ceremony…has roots in the religious practice of judges praying for guidance at the beginning of the year. The custom dates back to the Middle Ages…’ After the service the judges leave the Abbey via a rear entrance and walked to the Palace of Westminster where the Lord Chancellor entertains them with a ‘breakfast’ . (See http://wwwparliament.uk/about/occassions/lcbreakfast.cfm) This year the service coincided with the opening of the new UK Supreme Court (see http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/). The Justices of the Supreme Court walked from the new court building on Parliament Square to Westminster Abbey to participate in the service

Cartes de visite and the first mass media photographic images of the English judiciary: continuity and change

The goal of this chapter is to explore the impact that the invention of a particular type of photographic image, the carte de visite, had on visual images of the judiciary in England from the 1860s. The carte de visite is widely regarded as an innovation that helped widen access to photography. It is also associated with the birth of photography as a form of mass media. Evidence that the English judiciary were caught up in the frenzy of production and consumption that accompanied these developments, what contemporary commentators called ‘carteomania’ and ‘cardomania’, is to be found in a number of sources. These include catalogues of carte portraits on sale to the public and examples of carte portraits in collections such as London’s National Portrait Gallery and archives such as the library of Lincoln’s Inn. The chapter examines some of the effects that the encounter between the English judiciary and the technological and media innovations that come together in this format had upon the visual representation of the judiciary in the nineteenth century. How if at all did this encounter affect what appears within the frame of judicial portraiture? What impact if any did it have on other pictures of judges? These questions will be answered by way of a case study, focusing on Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn. He became Chief Justice of Common Pleas in 1856, Chief Justice of Queens Bench in 1859 and in 1875 he took up the post of Lord Chief Justice in the newly reformed courts

Tinkering with Theoretical Objects: Designing Theories in Scientific Inquiry

The EDISIn Project (Engineering Design in Scientific Inquiry), taught in an undergraduate teacher preparation program, is investigating where engineering design opportunities emerge within contexts of scientific inquiry, with implications for how science teachers might productively engage in engineering design in their science courses without compromising on either the science or the engineering. In some inquiries, the opportunities for engineering were obvious, particularly with respect to novel experimental designs and in developing physical representations of models. In other inquiries, however, the investigations were either largely theoretical or the experimental designs were readily developed without a need for deliberate attention to design practices. However, in these inquiries we notice commonalities between how students iteratively construct and manipulate theoretical objects in pursuit of scientific explanations and theories, and how they construct and manipulate physical objects. In particular, we call attention to playful, iterative, goal-oriented activities that have strong parallels to tinkering within the engineering design literature. In this paper, we provide an analysis of one student’s “idea tinkering” as she constructed a model of color mixing. We consider how literature from engineering education might be leveraged to support playful, iterative construction of theories in science - not only for its role in supporting the design of physical objects, but also theoretical objects

4-H State Leadership Boards: Measuring Leadership Life Skills and Youth-Adult Relationships

This descriptive correlational study sought to measure the development of leadership life skills and the perceptions of youth-adult relationships by youth serving on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards. Members of the 2013-2014 Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards (N = 153) served as the population for the study. A total of 99 responses were collected yielding a response rate of 65%. Board members reported high levels of youth involvement, adult involvement, and youth-adult interaction. Based on the high levels of involvement and interaction, youth-adult partnerships were present on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards. Future research should be conducted to determine if there is a difference in youth who serve on the Louisiana 4-H State Leadership Boards and other 4-H members who do not serve on the boards. No statistically significant relationship existed between the development of leadership life skills and youth-adult partnerships. Future research should investigate the subject deeper to determine why the two variables had no significant relationship in this study

The wit of Judge Rinder: judges, humour and popular culture

Judge Rinder is a British reality TV court show. It has much in common with the US archetype Judge Judy. But there are differences. One is Judge Rinder’s humour, and more specifically his wit. Using a research database of Judge Rinder cases the article examines the nature and effects of humour in this courtroom setting. It explores the role of the judge, the form the humour takes and the interactions and social relations it generates. A distinctive feature of the analysis is consideration of the impact of the audio-visual techologies and the techniques and conventions developed around them, upon the interactions and social relations the on screen humour generates with viewers. While the camera aligns the screen audience with the judge and the laughter track infects the audience with emotion the judge generates the paper cautions against assuming that all viewers have the same emotional experience. Keywords: Judge Rinder, reality TV court shows, Judge Judy, emotions, humour, laughter, televisio

Judicial diversity and the challenge of sexuality: some preliminary findings

Judicial diversity debates and reform initiatives have been a feature of several common law jurisdictions over many years. To date two strands of diversity, gender and ethnicity have dominated these debates. General arguments used to rationalise judicial diversity, the need for judicial appointments procedures to conform with the demands of equality and equal opportunity laws, that a diverse judiciary has a greater capacity to be sensitive to the needs and experiences of the diverse users of the legal system, that the judiciary be reflective of the diversity of the nation that it serves, that a diverse judiciary is a more accountable judiciary in complex western legal democracies, necessitates the incorporation of sexuality as a dimension of judicial diversity. But sexuality is and remains notable by its absence. The first objective of this article is to gather together and offer a critical analysis of existing data on the sexual composition of the judiciary. My second objective is to introduce and offer an analysis of new data that I have generated as part of an ongoing study of sexual diversity and the judiciary. The data has been generated by way of a series of interviews with lesbians and gay men who are members of the judiciary and legal professionals in various jurisdictions, in particular in Australia, England and Wales and South Africa. Within the confines of this article I limit my analysis of this data to the ways in which members of the judiciary experience and manage the boundary between invisibility and visibility