Trials in transition: A study of video links in courts

Videolinks are rapidly becoming an ingrained practice of courts in Sweden and internationally, enabling legal professionals and lay participants to join proceedings from other courtrooms, law offices or even home.

Whilst we currently know how videolinks impact our perceptions, we do not know how they are experienced or accomplished in trials.

Finding this missing knowledge can help to maintain the smooth functioning of the courts and uphold the courts’legitimacy as is central to democratic societies.

The purpose of the study is therefore to show how justice and the experience thereof can be upheld in a digitalised setting without losing any of the critical interactional and ritualistic dynamics.

Three questions will be addressed: How do legal professionals and lay participants experience their own participation and the participation of others via videolink and how do these experiences differ or coalesce?How do legal professionals and lay participants accomplish their participation in a trial via videolink and how do these accomplishments differ or coalesce?

How is the ritual of a trial constructed and conveyed in a videolink?Ethnographic observations of ten criminal trials and ten civil trials using videolinks will be conducted along with qualitative interviews with legal professionals and lay participants. The data will be analysed using NVivo.

The findings will be used to create guidelines, codes of practice and policy suggestions regarding videolinks’ appropriate usage.