Inequity and Surprise
Jon Bredeson
It was to my surprise upon entering the courthouse that a nuclear radiation symbol and the words “FALLOUT SHELTER” were the first things to catch my eye. I hesitated before taking a photo, uncertain not only of courthouse policy on photography, but because it felt as though we had stumbled into an area we were not permitted to access. For a moment, I assumed we had used the wrong door and stumbled into some utility section of the basement.
When we made our ways upstairs to the waiting area, filled with people to hear a forthcoming case, the same we had arrived for, the building began to better fit the idea in my mind of what a courthouse was. But the initial experience of entering the building stuck with me. And I had to wonder how the fallout shelter sign, the low placed lighting features, and the kaleidoscopic assortment of shapes and angles in the architecture of the room would be received by someone arriving for their day in court.
It became a piece of focus for me during the course of the research trip—how did entering a legal space affect the feeling of the place?
Everything about this was new for me--only having worked for Michele Statz as a transcriptionist prior to this trip, and at that point being generally unfamiliar with the worlds of judges, attorneys, and other myriad things legal, each meeting felt vividly distinct. This included what it was like to arrive at the various places we were conducting interviews. There is of course the caveat that we were expected already at these meetings and were there to discuss the work of whomever we were speaking to, rather than as clients in the legal system. But the differences in locations were still palpable.
At a private law firm, we were greeted in a large, spacious interior that might have been mistaken for a hotel lobby (especially with its ample light, wood interior design, and fireplace). We were late to this meeting but were still offered water and other refreshments and given a moment to find our bearings. At a public defender’s office in the same community, we sat in the “waiting area”—an entry space between outside and inside doors that had been turned into a gate keeping mechanism. You needed to speak with someone at the window and be buzzed-in before being allowed in further. We were late to this meeting as well, but here we sat in the cold space on chairs across from the outside doors (the doors failed to close completely, letting a significant draft from outside).
Similarly, the courthouses could be entirely different experiences. Outside of one courthouse, a friendly statute of a monster greeted visitors. Just inside, cases displayed taxidermy animals and fish. Ample daylight came in through the windows of the building, even through the green colored glass dome that adorned the building.
The feeling of entering was quite different than the prior one had been. There was something more inviting in these designs and touches. They were sometimes just as aged as anything at the prior courthouse but spoke to a personal touch.
The goals in describing the experience of the first courthouse are not to condemn or shame anyone associated with it. Rather, they are to 1) point to the inequities in resources across the legal landscape of northern Wisconsin, and 2) to think not just of how these inequities affect litigants using the services and spaces available to them in terms of access to resources, but as a personal, emotional experiences that affect one’s overall sense of dignity.
It is a call to think about the real, visceral, and impactful experience of being in legal spaces, and how they play both a literal and symbolic role in the question of access to justice.
Photographs by Jon Bredeson.