We’re pleased to share that Sneha Bhambri, Researcher at Cordis Bright, has authored a chapter in The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Criminology.

The chapter sought to understand women litigants' experiences of domestic violence proceedings in Magistrate Courts in Mumbai, India. To do so, this research relied on court ethnography and interviews with lawyers and women litigants, with a focus on the following questions: 

1. How do women litigants navigate the court?
2. How do they experience and participate in their court proceedings?
3. How do they spend time in court?
4. How do these experiences shape their opinions on access to justice?

Research on access to justice has often focused on how fast justice is delivered, cases disposed and pendency levels reduced. However, processes of law involve and require engagement of space, time, our senses (i.e., how does a space/ process make us feel?). To understand the accessibility and performance of justice holistically, one must move beyond numeric factors to understand how the law, courts and justice are felt and experienced by those they are designed for and implemented upon.

Findings from this research show that how women litigants' experience of court and their proceedings is shaped by the court's agency over them. This agency is exercised through rituals governing courtroom proceedings and through rules often not formally prescribed and known to the litigants (for instance, where one must stand, sit, when to speak and when not and more). The court thus moulds the behaviour, autonomy and mobility of litigants and undermines their role in the process, ranking them the lowest amongst stakeholders critical to their processes. 

To read more, please follow the links to the book and the chapter.