AbstractCourt 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.

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.

This thesis explores the legal geographies of immigration bail hearings in the UK. It brings together contemporary developments in digital justice with the methods and critical literatures of legal geography, facilitating an analysis of the transition towards remote hearing formats. In doing so, this thesis furthers our understanding both of some of the tools and concepts developed by legal geography, as well as recent and ongoing changes in digital justice.

This thesis examines a series of research questions. What is the nature of bail hearings as ‘spatio-temporal events’ (Massey 2005: 130) and how do they vary? What happens when technology is added to legal events, and what can legal geography tell us about these processes? and finally, how might technological innovations expand our understandings of space in legal events? I approach these questions by developing four key contact points between legal geography and digital justice developments which map on to four of my empirical chapters: access to justice, time, hearing space and spatial ruptures.

As a result of conducting fieldwork involving a range of hearing formats (from fully in-person to fully remote), the research presented here offers a unique insight into the influence of remoteness on legal events. This thesis uses ethnographies, semi-structured interviews, and Freedom of Information requests to interrogate developments in digital justice and to explore what such developments can tell us about the nature and production of hearing space more broadly. In doing so, I unsettle static notions of law and space and argue that transitions towards the increasing use of remote platforms in courts and tribunals should be understood in the context of hearing spaces that are always under construction, and are fluid, relational and changing.

AbstractCourt 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.

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.

© 2020 the Authors. Geography Compass published by John Wiley. &. Sons Ltd. 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.