I am pleased to welcome to ELB Book Corner Jocelyn Evans and Keith Gaddie, authors of the new book, The U.S. Supreme Court’s Democratic Spaces. Here is the second of four blog posts:

“The basic building block of American governance is the citizen, and the basic unit of American architecture is the citizen’s home.” ~Allan Greenberg, Architecture of Democracy (2006: 32-34).

“ Court + House = Courthouse”

When started exploring the homes of the Supreme Court, with the origin of the term and type “courthouse.” The term is not uniquely American, but its widespread use is distinctively so.

 “Court” is from the Latin coˉrtem, cohors (“yard,” “enclosure), and courts historically referenced various assemblies, but became associated with judicial proceedings. “House” is Germanic and cognates with Old Saxon and Middle Dutch traditions, referring not both individual dwellings and also other enclosed common spaces.   “Courthouse” as a singular English term emerged in the late fifteenth century.

The first Anglo-American civic buildings were meeting-houses imported by Puritans in the early 1600s. These extensions of the home — a communal house — were modeled after domestic architecture. Meeting-houses provided space for both religious and secular gatherings. They stored town records. By the early-18th century, growing religious diversity across the colonies led to meeting-houses being replaced by town-houses. Government business could dominate these spaces set aside from churches to serve secular purposes for the community, including the administration of justice. Markets usually filled the ground level; local governing bodies were on the floor above. Reference to these civic spaces as courthouses became common by the mid-1700s, and the term took hold in the second half of the century.

A pluralism of purpose persisted. Early advertising  suggests that courthouses served as fora and meeting places for community events — announcements, electioneering, speeches, scientific demonstrations, sermons, and mobilization of militia. The courthouse type emerged as government grew and the legal profession differentiated itself from other secular activities. The type persists, transactional spaces below, more solemn court space above, and censoring social behaviors to serve as the mainstay of the community.

The separate courthouse structure emerged coincident to the propagation of court systems, institutionalized with the staking of new states, counties, and governments. Governing Institutions — grand juries, ‘courts ordinary,’  ‘fiscal courts’ managed county affairs, and needed permanent seats. County courthouses and county squares logically followed.

Style also changed. As the U.S. broke from Georgian England, this new, multipurpose courthouse shifted from Georgian, and local vernacular styles to the ‘national style’ of Greek Revival or Classical. Later other Neoclassical, Gothic, and various Revival styles  took over and became associated with courthouses as a type.

The state and federal courts grew in complexity and permanence.  Appellate courts were created. Circuit-riding appellate judges acquired permanent court homes.  At the federal level, courthouses, customshouses, and post offices  were erected to create both homes and physical presence of the Federal authority.

American county courthouses are today spaces of communal and individual memory. People enter into marriage, adopt children, divorce, bring suit against others, pay fines, face trial, and sit on juries in these spaces. Births and deaths are recorded. They are secular temples for the ritual performance of hyper-localized popular governance, keeping democratic government at the center of everyday life. Whether a result of city planning or grand design, they sit as aspirational reminders of civil society, individual rights and responsibilities, and communal values.

I am pleased to welcome to ELB Book Corner Jocelyn Evans and Keith Gaddie, authors of the new book, The U.S. Supreme Court’s Democratic Spaces. Here is the first of four blog posts:

We write about democracy and public space. Some colleagues find it odd that we describe as ‘democratic’ the spaces of an unelected lifetime tribunal.  We see the courts as the oldest democratic institutions, a safeguard of rights and of public influence through the jury system. Individual dignity, equal protection under the law, and equal due process rights are where we find our definition.

Over time, democracy has changed. With change came changes in the location, composition, institutional reach and power of the Court. It expanded its calendar and has a more powerful docket. Circuit duties changed. The Court went from occasionally-sitting body to permanently-sitting. And as it evolved from upstairs tenant to “basement relation” to having a home of its own, it grew in symbolism, substantive power, and became cloaked in mystery like Karnak’s ancient priests.

The homes of the Court can be divided into three periods: Tenancy during the establishment of the Republic; adaptation in DC from 1800 until 1935; and institutional independence of space from 1935 forward.

The early Court made its home in three prominent quarters — the old Royal Market in lower Manhattan, and then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chamber in Independence Hall and then Philadelphia County Building from 1791 to 1799. This first location echoed the early local courthouse arrangements throughout the U.S. The latter two were formal governing structures, built in the Georgian /Federal style which defines the revolutionary era.

The movement of government to Washington brought along the Court, but it had no home despite Peter L’Enfant’s designation of a ‘Judiciary Square’ in DC’s masterplan, no courthouse accompanied. The Court took up rooms in the Senate wing, until Latrobe’s redesign of the Senate chamber resulted in the creation of an intimate basement courtroom and cloaking room for the Court. The Court moved into the “Old Senate Chamber” in 1861 after the new Senate chamber was completed.  The justices otherwise largely worked from home, relying on a messenger system to circulate opinion drafts. 

The consequence was a cloistered brotherhood, not unlike a small town law practice.

By 1925, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, was agitating for a building for the Court, and succeeded in the getting Congress to act, hiring Cass GIlbert as architect. Gilbert’s design reflected a conservatism displayed by many late 19th century architects from the City Beautiful movement (which influenced the McMillan Plan for D.C.). McMillan advantaged Neoclassical and Beaux Arts styles, reflected in Gilbert’s design, an iconic stone edifice in which Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes described the court as “black-robed beetles in the Temple of Karnak.” The structure defied emerging Art Deco, Bauhaus, Organic and International Modernist styles.

But it nonetheless changed the Court, and succeeded in creating a public space for protest and expression, as we see every first Monday in October. It presented an iconic temple front which accompanied news stories on the Court. It was a fully-defined home, composed of the diversity of spaces required by a fully functioning civic institution — ritual spaces, civic spaces, and circulation spaces — and also an ability to define its perimeter. Movement of the justices from home to a stone palace, and a change of entry into the court from public processional through the Capitol to an emergence from behind great curtains built a sense of mystery and distance, stage-shaped by the structure itself.

Great conversation:

Looking forward to this event at 5 pm PT October 13 (free registration required).

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case involving gun rights and the Second Amendment this term, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Over at SCOTUSblog, you can see the briefs in the case. One jumped out at me this week, as it was unexpected (to me, at least!)–a brief from the League of Women Voters. Here’s the summary of the argument: