We analyze the gap between public policies regarding domestic violence and the prosecution and defense of such policies in the courtroom. The prosecutors and public defenders we surveyed are on the front lines of domestic violence cases as they enter courtroom; nearly 25 percent of their caseloads involved domestic violence cases and of those, about 50 percent involved repeat offenders. We utilize the information from the public defenders and district attorneys to understand what types of domestic violence cases they see, who the victims are, and what happens to those who are convicted of domestic violence crimes. We also analyze the reported outcomes of domestic violence cases to see whether specific domestic violence laws have any influence on the punishment of domestic violence offenses. We present the first-hand perspectives of some of the individuals who are involved with domestic violence cases on a daily basis. We find that the implementation of public policies regarding domestic violence, such as mandatory arrest and gun removal, is implemented inconsistently across states, and we demonstrate that different policies and implementation practices lead to diverse outcomes of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.

Because dialogue represents philosophy happening in the context of interpersonal relationships, it is a natural place to investigate power dynamics, both displays of power and displays of resistance. But in literature, unlike in life, the power dynamics are completely within the control of one person, the author, who can script the situation as he chooses. In this chapter, I argue that there was a change in the rules of comportment found in literary dialogues between the first and fourth centuries CE that can be traced through paying close attention first to the appearance and then to the development of a new character in these discussions – a judge. A shared embrace of forensic rhetoric to express philosophical antagonism existed across changing modes of judgement in the Roman Empire. I argue that this forensic dialogic mode was introduced as a mode of sublimation of political energy, as a rerouting of resistance into a safer domain of scholastic antagonism.

Chapter 6 is the final empirical chapter, exploring the role of the courtroom space and design in access to justice in the CoP. The chapter starts with a critical understanding and analysis of the materiality of the court space before exploring the differences from my observations of the physical and virtual CoP. The chapter concludes with a look to the future of the CoP’s design, suggesting ways that relevant stakeholders might continue this imaginative and practical analysis process to reimagine the CoP in ways that better secure access to justice for the Person.

Chapter 4 further considers the ways in which prison medical officers provided evidence in court that might conflict with that of other medical witnesses and debated the applicability of the terms ‘criminal lunatic’, and ‘lunatic criminal’. The chapter discusses the establishment of institutional facilities for criminal lunatics, including Dundrum and Broadmoor, and legislative changes designed to establish whether individuals were ‘mad’ or ‘bad’. Prison medical officers now dealt with increasing numbers of cases of mental disorder among prisoners missed at the time of their trial or who became ill in prison. Though reluctant to relinquish prisoners and move them to asylums, many prisoners were transferred out of convict and local prisons and into criminal, district and county asylums, in a process often triggered by violence or disruptive behaviour rather than psychiatric diagnoses. The chapter explores how such transfers, and delays in making them, might trigger tensions between prison medical officers and asylum doctors and prison commissioners and lunacy commissioners and inspectors, evidenced in well-documented cases.