Legal Visualizations in Court Judgments: Reflections and Questions

Colette R. Brunschwig

1. Reflections on Legal Visualizations in Court Judgments

Increasingly, it seems, courts tend to integrate or embed visualizations in their decisions.

For instance, the Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart (Higher Regional Court Stuttgart) in one of its judgments deciding on property and copyright issues as regards the renovation of Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof (Stuttgart railway station; matter in dispute). Photographs of this matter in dispute can be seen within the publicly available decision (see <http://lrbw.juris.de/cgi-bin/laender_rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bw&nr=13575>). As regards Swiss jurisdiction, see, for instance,  BGE 139 I 77, available at <http://relevancy.bger.ch/php/clir/http/index.php?lang=de&zoom=&type=show_document&highlight_docid=atf%3A%2F%2F139-I-72%3Ade>.

In Brown v. Planta, the Supreme Court of the United States (see <http://www.supremecourt.gov/Default.aspx>) ruled that "Conditions in California's overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment" (<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24scotus.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss>). It ordered "the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates" (ibid.). Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote this judgment (see ibid.). Inserted by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the so-called Slip Opinion contains black-and-white photographs documenting that Californian prisons are overcrowded (see Brown v. Planta, 563 U.S. 52; available online at <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1233.pdf>).

I am not aware whether there is a visualized case law of administrative courts. I would suppose this is the case in decisions relating to building law. But such an assumption would require substantiation with examples.

Given the strong visual and audiovisual potential of the new information and communication technologies, one might imagine or indeed take steps to visualize and even audiovisualize judge-made law.

2. Questions regarding Legal Visualizations in Court Judgments

From the perspective of visual law, several questions need to be tackled, such as:

• Should the use of visualization in judgments be legislated? If so, how?
• Which issues of copyright law, the right to privacy, and data protection law would need to be considered in this legislation? For example, under which legal requirements would the court be entitled to use visualizations that occur in the parties' petitions?
• Which sections of such judgments are (best) suited to incorporate visualizations?
• Which branches of law would lend themselves to visualization in judgments?

3. References

(For further comments and information, see also http://blog.beck.de/2011/05/24/zustaende-in-den-kalifornischen-gefaengnissen-urteil-des-us-supreme-court-mit-fotos#comments, and <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31baradaran.html?_r=1>.)

(Please note: all websites in this posting were last accessed on June 8, 2011.)

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