Inside Justice - What's it like in a Court of Appeal

We live in a world of paper and words.

Today I went to the Royal Court of Justice. I listened to the appeals of two cases in the criminal division. The first thing that struck me as I entered the small court was the amount of papers it contained. The walls around, especially the one at my back, behind the benches, was covered with tomes of books, old, yellowed books. A man in the row before mine had four or five briefcases, tied together with a rubber band, and each one of them had a pile of sheets inside. The barristers in the front row had papers and folders and documents displayed before them as evidence to support their arguments. The three Judges were examining documents and leafing through files.

The surroundings gave me the idea of being in the temple of hacks and formality, of eloquent circumlocutions and fixed practices rather than the temple of justice. The simple task of handing out a document to the judge involves a threefold transfer: from the hands of the barrister to the secretary, from the secretary to the assistant of the judge, from the the assistant to the judge. It gave me the idea that justice - especially in a Court of Appeal - relies more on technicalities than on the actual respect of the law. But when it comes to human, after all, there's always something more involved.

The defendants were behind bars, in a sort of cage. One of them reminded me of a cow, or a bull. He had a big neck and a bald head. He seemed a little bit like me: a little bit lost, a little bit sleepy. He was looking around, and maybe he didn't understand all the arguments that the two wig-sporting law people were putting forward, deciding on his life, on the future of his existence.

In the house of the law everything is strictly regulated, but the flow of people that come and go. Anyone can pop up and attend a proceeding, from young professionals wearing blue suits to school girls wearing flowers in their hair. The restriction is limited to under-14s who are not allowed in. The behaviour within the Court is also subject to restriction. Recording the proceedings and the use of mobile phone are prohibited. Food and soft drinks are not allowed in the Court and a special ban makes clear that chewing gums is not welcome.

The Court is also the reign of the dust: a mixture of tradition and procedures. A barrister addressed the judges calling them Milord and Miladies, a trite formula that reminded me of The Rose of Versailles (Lady Oscar). Judges and barristers are still wearing wigs, even though we are in the XXI century - I imagined fleas having parties in those disgusting yellowish, greyish fake hair. Microphones hanging from lamps and from the ceiling amplify the articulated discussions between judges and barristers. The former giving a hard time to the latter, who do their best to challenge the judges' previous judgement and lead them to revise it.

It's an exchange which is sometimes hard to follow, but extremely fascinating too. The epitome of it being an invitation from Lord Justice Toulson to the barrister: "Will you remove the fog?" Such a powerful expression to embody the search of truth that the justice has to assess to make its decision. And at a certain point the judge's admission that sometimes judges have to come to a verdict making the best of the element at their disposal, though they may not be all.

It's somehow eerie that life-changing decisions are made on the basis of paperwork and words. Pieces of paper and speeches can and do change people's lives.