Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 18601913 [Hardcover]

Explores how local courtrooms have been a common feature of everyday life and culture since the eighteenth century.Examines the relationship between the creation of modern courtrooms and their widespread portrayal in journalism, literature, and popular culture. Sascha Auerbach argues that London's municipal courtrooms shaped the social experience and cultural meanings of law, contested moral norms, and helped determine boundaries of government authority.Examines the relationship between the creation of modern courtrooms and their widespread portrayal in journalism, literature, and popular culture. Sascha Auerbach argues that London's municipal courtrooms shaped the social experience and cultural meanings of law, contested moral norms, and helped determine boundaries of government authority.In the mid-eighteenth century, author and magistrate Henry Fielding adjudicated cases of theft, assault, and public disorder from his London home on Bow Street. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Fielding's modest 'police office' had expanded to become the most prolific court system in Britain and the cornerstone of criminal and civil justice in the metropolis. Sascha Auerbach examines the fascinating history of this institution through the lens of 'courtroom culture'  the combination of formal statute and informal custom that guided everyday practice in the London Police Courts. He offers a new model for understanding the relationship between law, culture, and society in modern Britain and illuminates how the local courtroom became a crucial part of everyday life and thoroughly entangled with popular representations of justice and morality.Introduction: Courtroom Culture; 1. 'Many-Coloured Scenes of Life': The Police Courts in Metropolitan Culture and Society, 17581860; 2. 'A Ruffian Rightly Punished': Morality and Local Courtrooms in Practice and Portrayal, 18601880; 3. 'An Evil Quarter of an Hour About the Precincts': Urban Reform and Municipal Authority in the Courtrol#,