Book Review: Life after Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society

Abstract

Judge Rinder (the latter is the subject of Chapter 10) as well as fictional productions such as Judge John Deed (examined in Chapters 6 and 7). In 2009, when the new UK Supreme Court was inaugurated, cameras were installed in the refurbished building. All proceedings in this new jurisdiction would be audio-visually recorded, and these recordings were to be available to the media and others, upon request. Some proceedings were broadcast live on Sky News, and the court launched its YouTube channel in 2013, which focuses on Judicial Summary Videos (155-6; also chapter 9). Here is where Moran squarely examines matters of open justice, transparency, and the relationship between the courts and the news media. For Moran, debates about cameras in courts are “intimately connected to debates about institutional transparency” (160). Moran undertakes a detailed analysis of the challenges and processes by which these courts co-exist with cameras, including interviewing key personnel about the careful negotiations, the protocols and the processes by which open justice is facilitated. Moran’s book reminds us that judges are both people and symbols. It is written in the broader contexts of legal biography and legal life writing, diversity and social inclusion of the judiciary, and official and unofficial representations of justice (and judges) in popular and literary culture. Moran traces the shifting technologies that produce judicial images, and the changing audiences for them. Images of judges are produced, managed and consumed within specific socio-cultural moments, and they circulate in an increasingly crowded cultural domain. Moran argues that the project of improving judicial visibility is bound up with that of improving judicial legitimacy, and that this sometimes backfires (237-8). Moran also accepts that visibility is not always synonymous with transparency, and that achieving open justice is an ongoing challenge. Moran’s work is a timely reminder, and also an invitation, to examine judges – as individuals and as an institution of power – by scrutinizing the moments when they become culturally visible. Moran’s idiosyncratic approach follows what must be his own cultural preferences – the shows he enjoys watching, the architecture he admires – as it also displays his striking ability to pay attention to small yet significant details and reveals that judicial visibility is often a carefully choreographed performance.