Court buildings are defined as symbolic and ritualistic settings through which people experience judicial authority. With the eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, access to physical spaces of courts was severely limited, while an increase in the use of digital and remote working tools came to take place. The use and/or development of digital technologies has thus been marking the daily life of the judiciary in many countries. It is, however, important to reflect upon the consequences of digital transformation underway, especially when justice is already taking place in the metaverse (i.e., experiences in Brazil and Colombia), raising pertinent questions: Will we still need physical courts? For what purpose, in what forms, and to whom (type of users)? Our questions are focusing the balance between digital justice and citizenship. With this article, we intend to reflect on the future of the physical courthouse, framing it within the Portuguese context. The analysis benefits from previous research, including from a survey applied in 2022 to Portuguese judges, assessing their views regarding the use of digital technologies. Their perceptions are crucial to understand the technological transformations and its impacts on the future of the physical courthouses and justice itself.

Given its multidimensionality, we understand food as a means to give substance to fundamental rights, repressions, resistances, and struggles for rights, in processes involving hostility, criminalization, solidarity, and access to justice. In the "Olives" section, we address the conflict between Israel and Palestine, where food and hunger bring to the debate the silencing of rights, power dynamics, oppression, and resistance. In the "Bread" section, we discuss the criminalization of solidarity, highlighting tensions between neoliberal policies and social movements that seek to mitigate their effects. We also analyse how neoliberal populism uses the rhetoric of securitization to marginalize social groups and perpetuate inequalities. In the "Kebab" section, we discuss issues related to urban decorum, examining how local urban policies reflect and reinforce social prejudices and discrimination.

Courthouses, as public edifices, serve as the physical backdrop for the administration of justice. Simultaneously, they are spaces inhabited and visited by a diverse array of court users, ranging from judicial professionals to litigants. This article explores the nuanced interplay between courthouse spaces and the emotional experiences they generate. It starts by surveying existing studies that examine such an intricate relationship. Then, and by drawing from a sample of interviews conducted across two distinct time periods (2010-2011 and 2017-2019) in Portugal, the article delves into the lived experiences of judges, prosecutors, and litigants. Their narratives provide a multifaceted view of the emotional experiences associated with the Portuguese (Family) Court buildings. To analyse these experiences, I turn to Henri Lefebvre's concept of lived space. Lived space refers to the emotions, memories, and interactions within a particular spatial context. Such dimension, in relation to courthouses, directly connects to the lived experience of legitimacy loss and low self-esteem affecting decision-making, on the one hand, and estrangement and rights' exclusion, on the other hand, felt by those subjects. By investigating how the spatial configurations of courthouses shape our emotions, we gain insights into the profound impact of such built environments on our understanding of the justice system, and the physical and symbolic obstacles in accessing it.

The introduction to the ‘Condition Critical’ symposium explains the background to the series on the climatic and pandemic crises at the beginning of the 2020s. What is the role of the law in times of crisis? How does this force for continuity, predictability and order react to the discontinuity characteristic of disasters? The suspension of the law or its day-to-day operations is a moment of extreme danger, rivalling that of the disaster itself, in the licence it gives to powerful actors, governments and others to exercise unfettered force. Yet it also presents institutions, communities and disruptors with opportunities for reinvention and renewal. In this symposium, legal, political science, clinical psychology, history and sociology researchers investigate critical conditions from pandemic responses and extreme weather to terrorist attacks and parental disputes. Law courts have responded by modifying their operations and applying new technologies. This was observed in the United Kingdom and in cross-border European proceedings. A major terrorist trial in France established new architectural and information and communication technology configurations. Courts and the technologies they use can also cause critical incidents, including the disruption of artificial intelligence applications and the critical condition of the Italian justice system. Research into the Portuguese family courts investigated whether they alleviate or exacerbate disputes over the healthcare of children. Government responses to extreme weather events and the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are studied at the intersection of law and politics in Australia. The individualising forces of neoliberal finance and law, and of urban communication technologies are criticised as dysfunctional when crises require solidarity.

The dominant paradigm today is that the child’s best interests require the involvement of both parents. Consequently, joint parental responsibility continues in most cases even after separation or divorce, and family courts are increasingly called upon to make difficult decisions over children’s health. This article is based on exploratory qualitative research and aims to identify the main challenges and possible solutions regarding the way in which parental health decision-making rights are structured and who can decide what, either individually or jointly. Through the thematic analysis of two interviews with mothers involved in family court conflicts over joint parental responsibility disagreements, this article shows that the focus on the joint exercise of parental responsibilities not only fosters family conflicts and court proceedings, but sometimes holds children’s health rights hostage to parental rights and court rulings. Despite the limitations of this exploratory study, the findings reinforce the critical nature of family law and policies and the effects on family conflicts.

The aim of this article is to retrospectively reflect on my experiences conducting research on the intersections between courthouse architecture and access to justice in family and children's matters. This raises methodological and practical issues motivated by the novelty of the theme, as was the case when I began my doctoral research approximately 13 years ago, in Portugal. Therefore, I will discuss the strategies adopted and the instruments I used within a qualitative methodology framework. I will particularly focus on the following methods: 1. visiting courthouse buildings, in order to examine, among other elements, localities, façades, courtrooms and other areas and spaces; 2. photographing the different angles/spaces, and 3. writing down a field diary with all my observations of the trips, visits, and encounters. This article traces the early preparations for selecting the courts to visit, how I got to the selected courts, what it was like visiting and photographing such buildings, and some of the difficulties I encountered. In the concluding section, with the benefit of hindsight, I offer reflections on what I would have done differently. El objetivo de este artículo es reflexionar retrospectivamente sobre mis experiencias en la realización de investigaciones sobre las intersecciones entre la arquitectura de los tribunales y el acceso a la justicia en asuntos de familia y menores. Esto plantea cuestiones metodológicas y prácticas motivadas por la novedad del tema, como era el caso cuando comencé mi investigación doctoral hace aproximadamente 13 años, en Portugal. Por lo tanto, discutiré las estrategias adoptadas y los instrumentos que utilicé en el marco de una metodología cualitativa. Me centraré especialmente en los siguientes métodos: 1. visitar los edificios de los juzgados, para examinar, entre otros elementos, los locales, las fachadas, las salas de vistas y otras áreas y espacios; 2. fotografiar los diferentes ángulos/espacios, y 3. escribir un diario de campo con todas mis observaciones de los viajes, visitas y encuentros. Este artículo relata los primeros preparativos para seleccionar los tribunales que iba a visitar, cómo llegué a los tribunales elegidos, cómo fue visitar y fotografiar tales edificios y algunas de las dificultades que encontré. En la sección final, con la perspectiva que da la experiencia, reflexiono sobre lo que habría hecho de otra manera.

Three concurrent global environmental trends are particularly apparent: human population growth, urbanization, and climate change. Especially in countries such as Ethiopia in the Global South, all three are impacted by, and in turn have bearing upon, social justice and equity. Combined, these spatial and social factors reduce wellbeing, leading to increasing urgency to create urban environments that are more livable, resilient, and adaptive. However, the impacts on, and of, non-human urban residents, particularly on the ecosystem services they provide, are often neglected. We review the literature using the One Health theoretical framework and focusing on Ethiopia as a case-study. We argue for specific urban strategies that benefit humans and also have spillover effects that benefit other species, and vice versa. For example, urban trees provide shade, clean the air, help combat climate change, create more livable neighborhoods, and offer habitat for many species. Similarly, urban neighborhoods that attract wildlife have characteristics that also make them more desirable for humans, resulting in improved health outcomes, higher livability, and enhanced real-estate values. After summarizing the present state of knowledge about urban ecology, we emphasize components relevant to the developing world in general and pre- COVID-19 pandemic Ethiopia in particular, then expand the discussion to include social justice and equity concerns in the built environment. Prior to the ongoing civil war, Ethiopia was beginning to invest in more sustainable urbanization and serve as a model. Especially in light of the conflict and pandemic, much more will need to be done.

Portugal, with circa 10 million inhabitants, has almost 800 young people, aged 16-24 years, serving prison sentences. The majority comes from low-income families living in sensitive urban areas of Lisbon and Oporto, with low levels of education, and many are Afro-Portuguese or come from African Portuguese-speaking countries. These young people are thus identified with the neighbourhoods where they live, portrayed as violent and problematic. The narratives from the actors of the justice system we interviewed suggest that such depiction results from a set of plural disruptions – social, legal, and institutional – leading to the selectivity and criminalisation of this group of young people. We thus call them the “damned of inclusion” since the plurality of exclusions affecting them hasn’t been addressed holistically by the social inclusion programs created in the last decades. Since these young men are “caught under the radar”, there seems to be a criminal reaction from the law, the judicial practices and the prison system – which turns into a normalizing response.

The eleven papers in this special issue analyze how different sources of disruption collide with normality, the consequences on individual, social and institutional life, and efforts to re-establish the old or to create a new normal. They arose from a series of online seminars in September and October 2020 investigating normality, disruption and normalization in the wake of the current environmental, technological, epidemiological and socio-economic shocks. Disruption is a window into the underlying fabric of social arrangements. It allows us to investigate the concept of normality and its implications, the tensions and conflicts between economic, social, legal and technological means used to re-establish normality. Technologies of normalization may paradoxically cause further disruptions. Human dignity is a landmark value in these inquiries. The introduction and the papers suggest possible measures to anticipate disruptions and consequent harms. They alert us to the risks to human dignity arising from disruption and from attempts to reimpose forms of normality.

Although it has been claimed that we live in an age of constitutionalism, national and transnational constitutions neither appear as uniform models nor as uncontested means of setting the rules of the game in the political, economic, or religious domain. This book aims to convince readers of a cultural perspective on constitutions. Tying in with the research approach of the Käte Hamburger Center “Law as Culture”, the term “constitutional culture” evokes the multidimensional life of a constitution that cannot be restricted to its – though essential – textual normative provisions and authorized interpreters. Grasping the foundational force and societal influence of constitutions by means of cultural theory and analysis also calls for the investigation of narratives, symbols, rituals, materials, and places in which constitutions are framed and reproduced. With this objective in mind, the contributions to this volume, written by lawyers, sociologists, and political scientists, illuminate different dimensions of the cultural manifestation of constitutions as well as contemporary legal, political, and social struggles arising around their shape and range of influence in various regions of the world.

The links between food, families and the law seem to be particularly strong in what concerns dietary issues, parental food choices and the best interests of the child. In such a framework, I will examine some recent decisions that have been pronounced by Italian courts having to decide disputes involving such questions in relation to alternative food choices. My claim, drawing on Canguilhem, is that some of these decisions seem to point towards an imposition to normalise food practices and familial behaviours: children and parents are to be educated towards food practices that are seen as in accord with social normativity (normal) and avoid those considered as deviant (pathological).

In this brief comment, I will mainly engage with chapters three and six of Desmond Manderson's Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts. In his recent book, Manderson's poignant argument resides in confronting colonial law's structural violence, and how we need to contrast familiar tropes of colonial representation we have regrettably taken for granted. Art, in its various forms, is one way to do it, especially in these times of populist ideologies.

The past century has seen a significant expansion of dedicated courtroom buildings in two separate but comparable countries, Portugal and Scotland. The architecture of both countries embodies different national and civic values. In the case of Portugal, two particular types of building are encountered with design driven by the varying demands of central Government. The first of those types comprises structures erected during the period of the dictatorship from 1926 to 1974 with a stress on the nobility of justice through monumental buildings with accompanying decoration and symbols of justice. The more recent period has seen a less homogeneous approach with both purpose-built and adapted buildings often providing spaces of mediocre quality, limited decoration and justice-related symbols. In Scotland the earlier 19th century buildings followed the design preferences of local professionals and what was produced were, for the most part, either classical Greek temples of justice or neo-Baronial strong houses of the law. In both cases the buildings were typically unadorned by symbols of justice. Recent centralization has altered that flexibility. In the 21st century in both Portugal and Scotland the expressed need to reduce expenditure on such public services, through the device of court reform, is in danger of altering the role of the courts as expressions of national or civic spirit. Here governments are seeking to economize in a way which contrasts with more expansive and design-centred approaches taken in such countries as France and the United States.

Courthouses are one of the founding pillars of the modern rule of law, being a sovereign body. But courthouses are not just buildings where justice is applied, administered, and written. From Max Weber on, courts have been associated with the urban dimension and the place they occupy in the geography of the cities. As in a mirror game, both city and court building look at each other, both shape each other, they belong to one another. And yet, how often do we think of their intimate interactions? Having this in mind, and by examining a number of geographically disparate cases, I intend to discuss correlated variations of the mirror game between city and courthouse building, where variables such as ‘the proxemics of the courthouse’, the (dis)alignment amid centre and periphery, ‘the sense of loss’ and the significance of control/discipline will be central to comprehend the ‘court/city’ narratives involved. Such semiotic analysis aims to foster reflection on the socio-political weight the location of the court—the connections of the building (comprising its architecture) and the city—may express. I conclude by arguing that courthouse buildings must rediscover their place and legitimacy, not only in the community’s collective imagination, but also in the urban space, promoting a closer dialogue with the cities in which they operate, as essential axes of city life. Particularly at a time when the likely way forward suggests a digital trajectory, possibly without the need for buildings.

The past century has seen a significant expansion of dedicated courtroom buildings in two separate but comparable countries, Portugal and Scotland. The architecture of both countries embodies different national and civic values. In the case of Portugal, two particular types of building are encountered with design driven by the varying demands of central government. The first of those types comprises structures erected during the period of the dictatorship from 1926 to 1974 with a stress on the nobility of justice through monumental buildings with accompanying decoration and symbols of justice. The more recent period has seen a less homogeneous approach with both purpose built and adapted buildings often providing spaces of mediocre quality, limited decoration and justice-related symbols. In Scotland the earlier nineteenth century buildings followed the design preferences of local professionals and what was produced were, for the most part, either classical Greek temples of justice or neo-Baronial strong houses of the law. In both cases the buildings were typically unadorned by symbols of justice. Recent centralization has altered that flexibility. In the twenty-first century in both Portugal and Scotland the expressed need to reduce expenditure on such public services, through the device of court reform, is in danger of altering the role of the courts as expressions of national or civic spirit. Here governments are seeking to economize in a way which contrasts with more expansive and design-centred approaches taken in such countries as France and the United States.

In this paper, I examine the current geographical location of Portuguese courts and the effects this territorial redefinition has had on the relationships between the justice system and the territories/populations in a context in which external and internal political factors, rather than a mere need to improve the justice system, have played a major role. Such an analysis entails three key elements: the geographic impacts on access to justice, in view of the emblematic presence of the state in the territories, both contrasted with the conflict between specialisation and the proximity of jurisdiction.

As interseções complexas entre comida e direito devem ser consideradas uma questão a analisar, pois a comida é um guarda-chuva interdisciplinar que fornece um excelente aparato epistemológico e metodológico para examinar as relações sociais contemporâneas, iluminando as contradições, as possibilidades e os limites do direito. E é neste contexto que pretendo introduzir o tema do papel da comida no direito da família, em geral, e na sua relação com as responsabilidades parentais, em particular – o que farei através da análise de algumas recentes sentenças emanadas por tribunais italianos que tiveram de decidir conflitos envolvendo questões dietárias, deveres dos progenitores e superior interesse da criança.

Courthouse buildings do not usually play a significant role in most socio-legal research on law-and-courts; and where the courthouse buildings have been considered, authors often take for granted the need for a ritualized adjudicative process within a certain kind of building, usually a pompous and prominent one. My aim, nevertheless, is to discuss the law buildings, and their internal configuration, where the specialized jurisdiction of family and children justice is rendered, in Portugal. This article will thus consider the discrepancies between the courthouses in books and the courthouses in action, or how they are legally designed and concretely structured, and lived, by giving voice to court professionals (judges and prosecutors) and court users, pointing out the problems and needs they have identified, and the claims they make.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we can observe the consolidation of the institutionalization and the beginning of the internationalization of the Portuguese sociology of law, in which the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra plays a central role, although other institutional actors begin to emerge. However, the gap between the disciplinary fields of sociology and law continues to prevail. This article traces the history of the sociology of law in Portugal in the 21st century, focusing on the role of CES, and it is divided into three parts: the first deals with the transversal issues of the sociology of law in Portugal; the second refers to the major themes that have been the subject of analysis in the last 20 years; and, finally, the third part focuses on future challenges to the field.