Architect Of Justice

A major figure in American legal history during the first half of the twentieth century, Felix Solomon Cohen (1907-1953) is best known for his realist view of the law and his efforts to grant Native Americans more control over their own cultural, political, and economic affairs. A second-generation Jewish American, Cohen was born in Manhattan, where he attended the College of the City of New York before receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University and a law degree from Columbia University. Between 1933 and 1948 he served in the Solicitor's Office of the Department of the Interior, where he made lasting contributions to federal Indian law, drafting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, and, as head of the Indian Law Survey, authoring The Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1941), which promoted the protection of tribal rights and continues to serve as the basis for developments in federal Indian law.In Architect of Justice, Dalia Tsuk Mitchell provides the first intellectual biography of Cohen, whose career and legal philosophy she depicts as being inextricably bound to debates about the place of political, social, and cultural groups within American democracy. Cohen was, she finds, deeply influenced by his own experiences as a Jewish American and discussions within the Jewish community about assimilation and cultural pluralism as well the persecution of European Jews before and during World War II.Dalia Tsuk Mitchell uses Cohen's scholarship and legal work to construct a history of legal pluralism--a tradition in American legal and political thought that has immense relevance to contemporary debates and that has never been examined before. She traces the many ways in which legal pluralism informed New Deal policymaking and demonstrates the importance of Cohen's work on behalf of Native Americans in this context, thus bringing federal Indian law from the margins of American legal history to its center. By following the development of legal pluralism in Cohen's writings, Architect of Justice demonstrates a largely unrecognized continuity in American legal thought between the Progressive Era and ongoing debates about multiculturalism and minority rights today. A landmark work in American legal history, this biography also makes clear the major contribution Felix S. Cohen made to America's legal and political landscape through his scholarship and his service to the American government.

Legal Architecture addresses how the environment of the trial can be seen as a physical expression of our relationship with ideals of justice. It provides an alternative account of the trial, which charts the troubled history of notions of due process and participation. In contrast to visions of judicial space as neutral, Linda Mulcahy argues that understanding the factors that determine the internal design of the courthouse and courtroom are crucial to a broader and more nuanced understanding of the trial. Partitioning of the courtroom into zones and the restriction of movement within it are the result of turf wars about who can legitimately participate in the legal arena and call the judiciary to account. The gradual containment of the public, the increasing amount of space allocated to advocates, and the creation of dedicated space for journalists and the jury, all have complex histories that deserve attention. But these issues are not only of historical significance. Across jurisdictions, questions are now being asked about the internal configurations of the courthouse and courtroom, and whether standard designs meet the needs of modern participatory democracies: including questions about the presence and design of the modern dock; the ways in which new technologies threaten to change the dynamics of the trial and lead to the dematerialization of our primary site of adversarial practice; and the extent to which courthouses are designed in ways which realise their professed status as public spaces. This fascinating and original reflection on legal architecture will be of interest to socio-legal or critical scholars working in the field of legal geography, legal history, criminology, legal systems, legal method, evidence, human rights and architecture.

Spatializing Justice calls for architects and urban designers to do more than design buildings and physical systems. Architects should take a position against inequality and practice accordingly. With these thirty short, manifesto-like texts—building blocks for a new kind of architecture— Spatializing Justice offers a practical handbook for confronting social and economic inequality and uneven urban growth in architectural and planning practice, urging practitioners to adopt approaches that range from redefining infrastructure to retrofitting McMansions. These building blocks call for expanded modes of practice, through which architects can imagine new spatial procedures, political and economic strategies, and modalities of sociability. Challenging existing exclusionary policies can advance a more experimental architecture, one not bound by formal parameters. Architects must think of themselves as designers not only of things but of civic processes, complicate the ideas of ownership and property, and imagine new sites of research, pedagogy, and intervention. As one of the texts advises, "the questions must be different questions if we want different answers." Cruz and Forman are principals in ESTUDIO TEDDY CRUZ + FONNA FORMAN, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego. They lead a variety of urban research agendas and civic/public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond. The work has been exhibited widely in prestigious cultural venues across the world.

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and theory, this book examines the interrelationships between architecture and justice, highlighting the provocative and curiously ambiguous juncture between the two. Illustrated by a range of disparate and diverse case studies, it draws out the formal language of justice, and extends the effects that architecture has on both the place of, and the individuals subject to, justice. With its multi-disciplinary perspective, the study serves as a platform on which to debate the relationships between the ceremonial, legalistic, administrative and penal aspects of justice, and the spaces that constitute their settings. The structure of the book develops from the particular to the universal, from local situations to the larger city, and thereby examines the role that architecture and urban space play in the deliberations of justice. At the same time, contributors to the volume remind us of the potential impact the built environment can have in undermining the proper juridical processes of a socio-political system. Hence, the book provides both wise counsel and warnings of the role of public/civic space in affirming our sense of a just or unjust society.

The first monograph of MASS Design Group, the internationally lauded firm creating some of the most powerful and humane works of architecture today. Founded in 2008, MASS Design Group collaborated with Partners In Health and the Rwanda Ministry of Health to design and build the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda, a masterwork of architecture that also uniquely serves a community in need. Since then, MASS has grown into a dynamic collaborative of architects, planners, engineers, filmmakers, researchers, and public health professionals working in more than a dozen countries in the fields of design, research, policy, education, and strategic planning. Amid ongoing recognition (the 2018 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture), MASS's most recent project, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, has been featured in more than 400 publications, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Washington Post. Mark Lamster of Dallas Morning News called the memorial "the single greatest work of American architecture of the twenty-first century." Justice Is Beauty highlights MASS's first decade of designing, researching, and advocating for an architecture of justice and human dignity. With more than thirty projects built or under construction and some 200,000 people served, MASS has pioneered an immersive approach in the practice of architecture that provides the infrastructure, buildings, and physical systems necessary for growth, dignity, and well-being, while always engaging local communities with attention to the specifics of cultural context and social needs.

A major figure in American legal history during the first half of the twentieth century, Felix Solomon Cohen (1907–1953) is best known for his realist view of the law and his efforts to grant Native Americans more control over their own cultural, political, and economic affairs. A second-generation Jewish American, Cohen was born in Manhattan, where he attended the College of the City of New York before receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University and a law degree from Columbia University. Between 1933 and 1948 he served in the Solicitor's Office of the Department of the Interior, where he made lasting contributions to federal Indian law, drafting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, and, as head of the Indian Law Survey, authoring The Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1941), which promoted the protection of tribal rights and continues to serve as the basis for developments in federal Indian law.In Architect of Justice, Dalia Tsuk Mitchell provides the first intellectual biography of Cohen, whose career and legal philosophy she depicts as being inextricably bound to debates about the place of political, social, and cultural groups within American democracy. Cohen was, she finds, deeply influenced by his own experiences as a Jewish American and discussions within the Jewish community about assimilation and cultural pluralism as well the persecution of European Jews before and during World War II.Dalia Tsuk Mitchell uses Cohen's scholarship and legal work to construct a history of legal pluralism—a tradition in American legal and political thought that has immense relevance to contemporary debates and that has never been examined before. She traces the many ways in which legal pluralism informed New Deal policymaking and demonstrates the importance of Cohen's work on behalf of Native Americans in this context, thus bringing federal Indian law from the margins of American legal history to its center. By following the development of legal pluralism in Cohen's writings, Architect of Justice demonstrates a largely unrecognized continuity in American legal thought between the Progressive Era and ongoing debates about multiculturalism and minority rights today. A landmark work in American legal history, this biography also makes clear the major contribution Felix S. Cohen made to America's legal and political landscape through his scholarship and his service to the American government.

This collection interrogates relationships between court architecture and social justice, from consultation and design to the impact of material (and immaterial) forms on court users, through the lenses of architecture, law, socio-legal studies, criminology, anthropology, and a former senior federal judge. International multidisciplinary collaborations and single-author contributions traverse a range of methodological approaches to present new insights into the relationship between architecture, design, and justice. These include praxis, photography, reflections on process and decolonising practice, postcolonial, feminist, and poststructural analysis, and theory from critical legal scholarship, political science, criminology, literature, sociology, and architecture. While the opening contributions reflect on establishing design principles and architectural methodologies for ethical consultation and collaboration with communities historically marginalised and exploited by law, the central chapters explore the textures and affects of built forms and the spaces between; examining the disjuncture between design intention and use; and investigating the impact of architecture and the design of space. The collection finishes with contemplations of the very real significance of material presence or absence in courtroom spaces and what this might mean for justice. Courthouse Architecture, Design and Social Justice provides tools for those engaged in creating, and reflecting on, ethical design and building use, and deepens the dialogue across disciplinary boundaries towards further collaborative work in the field. It also exists as a new resource for research and teaching, facilitating undergraduate critical thought about the ways in which design enhances and restricts access to justice.