Courtroom ethnography is always done at a particular time and in a particular space. So far, so obvious. Yet, a few years of traveling back and forth between various Higher Regional Courts all over Germany have taught me that there is much more nuance to the spatial and temporal aspects of courtroom ethnographic work. In this blog post, I will draw on my fieldwork to reflect on how some of these interact. That is, how the where and when of a trial impact whether and, if so, at what cost researchers can observe proceedings.

A Country for a Field – Mapping Terrorism Proceedings in Germany

In my PhD project, I interrogate the gendering of discourses of political violence (Åhäll 2015; Gentry and Sjoberg 2015; Jackson 2022) by looking at trials against women charged with terrorism in Germany. Such cases are tried by Higher Regional Courts (Oberlandesgerichte–OLGs), of which there are 23 plus the Kammergericht in Berlin (Oberlandesgerichte in Deutschland, n.d.). In practice, however, only a handful of courts regularly try terrorism charges. It is thus mainly these cities that constitute the field for my courtroom ethnographic endeavor.

This federal structure of terrorism prosecution has several implications for courtroom researchers. Each court has its own communication channels and practices, making it challenging – and often time consuming – to find information on individual trials (see also Anja Schmidt-Kleinert, this blog). Furthermore, courts that try such cases are geographically dispersed. Getting from Hamburg to Munich – both cities in which prominent terrorism cases have taken place – for instance, is an 800 km voyage. Finally, because courts tend to hold their sessions on the same days each week, hearings of relevance might overlap, thus requiring the constant negotiation of trade-offs between going to one court over another at a specific time.

Given all these factors, courtroom ethnographic research in Germany requires a high degree of mobility, flexibility in planning and, to be quite frank, a lot of nerves. To illustrate how this can feel when in the field, let me take you back to a trip I did in early 2025.

Vignette: Higher Regional Court Celle, Spring 2025

I guess Celle and I will never become friends. Today was the third time that I travelled to the old-timey city just to be leaving more or less empty handed in terms of data. The first time, I was told that the two sessions planned for the day and the day after were cancelled last minute. News that was shared with me and another observer as we were already sitting in the waiting room of the courthouse. A week later, a session was finally held – only for the judge to suspend the proceedings for the next three weeks. This time around, I did not even make it into the courthouse. The trial I came to follow has attracted so much media attention that there were only ten seats available for non-press-accredited observers. And when I arrived two hours before the proceedings were to commence, these were long occupied by people who had apparently queued in front of the OLG since the early morning hours. As Celle has no hostel infrastructure to speak of, I again have booked myself into a rather costly AirBnB that I will now have to leave prematurely. And, as the last times, I will have to decide whether to buy an expensive but fast-train ticket back to my fieldwork base, or whether I will resign myself to another five hours on the train on my seasonal Germany ticket (price tag: 58€/month).

Judicial temporalities…

Courtroom ethnographers quickly learn that the (application of the) law has its own temporality. While there are constraints on judges’ ability to pause proceedings, cancel and re-schedule individual sessions, it is a form of institutional power that rests firmly outside of the researcher’s control. Additionally, because such changes tend to be communicated to the public at the last minute, the costs involved in “getting there” have often already been incurred. The judicial rhythms by which trials move forward are thus frequently mis-aligned with research timelines. This temporal authority creates a systematic disadvantage for researchers, who must maintain constant readiness – often across considerable geographical distance – to mobilize while absorbing the financial and personal costs of judicial unpredictability.

…infrastructures

Spatial and infrastructural factors shape access in critical ways. Trials are generally “open to the public”. Yet, OLGs vary in seating capacity – and hence accessibility. Even within a given courthouse, this capacity fluctuates. As researchers cannot get accredited for observations, factors beyond their control, such as increased media attention, quite literally shrink the space for scholars to attend. Researchers should thus always take into consideration which infrastructural affordances the courthouse they want to enter makes – and adjust their timing of arrival accordingly. Moreover, the accommodation infrastructure of different cities hosting OLGs shapes how flexibly and at what price one can reach the court. The availability of affordable hostels opens up possibilities to make spontaneous trips to individual courts, but not all cities have such an infrastructure. Conversely, in those that do, staying somewhere cheap often comes at the expense of the comfort of having a private space after a long day of trial observations.

…and positionality

Clearly, how we experience (judicial) time and space is also fundamentally shaped by our positionality. My ability to navigate the repeated cancellations, sustain presence across multiple cities, and absorb the cost of unpredictable scheduling depended on the financial flexibility of my university, my cultural familiarity with the German transportation systems and my physical capacity to endure uncomfortable accommodation arrangements. These privileges operate intersectionally (Crenshaw 1989). White researchers (like myself) navigate the security and urban spaces around courthouses differently than others, while institutional affiliations provide varying degrees of financial support for extended, uncertain fieldwork. The bodily and mental demands of courtroom research on taxing topics such as terrorism under conditions of spatial and temporal unpredictability create additional layers of exclusion. Despite the supposed openness of “justice in the making”, sustained engagement with legal proceedings is not just time- and travel-intensive: it’s emotionally and physically draining, making the work accessible primarily to those with particular forms of social and economic capital.

Ultimately, access to courtrooms is not just a legal right – it is shaped by the dynamic interaction of time, space, and social position. Planning and conducting courtroom ethnography requires attending to these structural, logistic, and embodied realities.

References

Åhäll, Linda. 2015. Sexing War/Policing Gender: Motherhood, Myth and Women’s Political Violence. Routledge.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1(8):139–67.

Gentry, Caron E., and Laura Sjoberg. 2015. Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books Ltd.

Jackson, Leonie B. 2022. The Monstrous and the Vulnerable. Hurst Publishers.

Oberlandesgerichte in Deutschland | Kontakt, Adresse und Öffnungszeiten. n.d. Retrieved May 28, 2025. https://gerichte-und-staatsanwaltschaften.de/oberlandesgerichte/.