Workshop: Marking 100 years of the ban on cameras in courtrooms

Join us for a 1-day workshop examining the relation between law and images in light of the rise of digital courtrooms in diverse jurisdictions such as the UK, Australia, India and China.

2025 marks a century since sec 41 of the Crime and Justice Act of 1925 banned cameras, sketches, and portrait-making in all courtrooms in England and Wales. Since the creation of the UK Supreme Court, over the last 20 years, these restrictions have slowly been softened, and today many courts in the UK livestream their proceedings directly to the citizens, and other are planning to follow suit. 

This (re)introduction of cameras into courtrooms is accompanied by a wider transformation from physical to virtual/hybrid courts and the establishment of digital infrastructure for court management systems. This transformation also coincides with a shift from traditional media to social media, where visual culture seems to be replacing the power of the text, traditional public spheres are becoming virtual, and the citizen’s relationship with the state is increasingly digitised. 

Drawing on the experiences of digital courtrooms in the UK, Australia, China, India and other jurisdictions, workshop papers will reflect on what lies ahead for law’s relation to images in the new digital era, and how the transformation of the medium may impact ideas of judicial transparency and accountability and notions of open justice in the 21st century. 

Organisers

• Kanika Sharma (Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Gender, and Media, SOAS University of London) 
• Ozan Kamiloglu (Senior Lecturer, School of Law and Social Sciences, London South Bank University)

A Zoom link will be sent to all registered attendees for those who wish to join online. 

If you are in London, please join us in person at SOAS. 

For the workshop programme and to learn about our larger project please see: https://www.courtofimages.com/blog/workshop-marking-100-years-of-the-ban-on-cameras-in-courtrooms