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Space and Culture
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How Courts Know

Comparing English Crown Court, U.S.—American State Court, and German District Court

Thomas Scheffer

Free University Berlin

Kati Hannken-Illjes

University Jena

Alexander Kozin

Free University Berlin

To grasp criminal courts as truth spots, one needs to go beyond their symbolic applications to consider their interactional and epistemic implications. In this study, the authors compare the English Crown Court, German District Court, and U.S. State Court as "places on display" and as "places denied." These perspectives comment on the courts in light of their different interaction orders and their different positions in knowledge processes. For the latter, the authors utilize Knorr's taxonomy of laboratory—experiment relations. The article arrives at one basic distinction: the procedural replacement of trial hearings by deal-oriented plea bargaining in the U.S. context. In contrast, the English and the German courts involve a preference for trial hearings and for fully developed cases, which, however, does not forbid but encourage forms of trial-oriented plea bargain.

Key Words: courtroom • truth spot • criminal courts • thick comparison • interaction order • knowledge process • laboratory • experiment • epistemic culture

This version was published on May 1, 2009

Space and Culture, Vol. 12, No. 2, 183-204 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331208325600
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