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.

中文翻译：

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法庭观察：法律行动主义中的可见性、公开性、见证和体现

法庭观察涉及基层努力观察司法系统决策的日常工作，通常由活动人士进行，作为审查和挑战法官等法律专业人士权力的一种方式。本文主张在法律地理研究中更加关注法庭监视。世界各地存在许多法庭观察计划，本文的第一部分对其中一些进行了调查，以了解它们的多样性、它们可能面临的挑战以及它们所具有的影响力。本文的第二部分使用法庭观察来探讨在法庭、审判和听证会的法律研究中的可见性、公开性、见证和体现问题。它认为，法庭监视突出了法律公开的复杂性，使“封闭”或“开放”听证会的二元概念问题化，并且还提出了关于观看和见证之间的道德差异的重要问题。最后，在法院通过数字观看方式（如电视和播客）公开的方式激增的背景下，该论文询问实际在现场观看法律程序有什么不同。