Constitutions Written in Stone

Patrícia Branco
Constitutions Written in Stone?

Considering the Architecture of Supreme
and Constitutional Courts
Introduction
The invitation to discuss the architecture of supreme and constitutional courts
means a challenge to me. My previous research on courthouse architecture con-
cerns the courts of first instance or lower courts1 – in particular, the Portuguese
family courts – and at that time I imposed on myself the idea of not focusing on
the higher courts, primarily because I wanted to know about the courts of every-
day life rather than those endowed with more respect or solemnity at the top of
the hierarchical chain of the judicial system. Furthermore, when I started inves-
tigating the nexus between courthouse architecture and access to justice, which
is, in fact, a fundamental right enshrined in many constitutions (a meta-right, as
Ferrajoli2 would claim), the literature paid, in my opinion, too much attention to
certain higher courts, such as the United States Supreme Court, as if only one type
of architecture could transmit or give concretion to the law. In addition, I con-
fess I probably focus on that area of socio-legal studies that, as Guibentif 3 has
claimed, pays too little attention to constitutional processes and practices, even if
dealing with access to justice means dealing with the constitution and the Con-
stitutional Court in various aspects, mainly its case law. But not, until now, with
its architecture.
However, supreme and constitutional courts cannot be avoided. After all, they
do have extended powers and jurisdiction over the lower courts, but they do not
simply apply the law and review and assure the constitutionality of laws; they
can also create the law. For someone like me, interested in family law, the cases
of Loving or Obergefell in the United States4 or the recognition of homoaffective
unions in Brazil5 are extremely important.
1 Cf. Branco: Os Tribunais como Espaços; Branco: Courthouses as Spaces of Recognition.

2 Cf. Ferrajoli: La democrazia attraverso i diritti.
3 Cf. Guibentif: Direitos, Justiça, Cidadania.
4 See Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. (2015).
5 Declared by the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court in May 2011.
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44 Patrícia Branco
Furthermore, and more complex than that, they are, as Gephart6 has argued,
at the crossroads between a problem of autonomy – as they are the most promi-
nent institutions of the third branch of power – and a problem of linkage in re-
lation to politics. In fact, and unavoidably, constitutional courts are, as Ginsburg
and Garoupa claim, political actors because their decisions have political conse-
quences.7
I suspect many lawyers or jurists, let alone ordinary citizens, have never been
to the Portuguese Constitutional Court, although they have probably seen it from
a distance and/or on TV. This is due to its own rules on jurisdiction and material
competence, which means it only operates in certain cases and thus has a rather
low caseload, as happens with other courts of this nature. Secondly, we should not
forget that most constitutional courts have a rather recent history. Originally con-
ceived by Hans Kelsen for the Austrian Constitution of 1920 and later adopted after
the Second World War in Germany and in Italy, they have expanded to Southern
and Eastern Europe, as well as to Asia and to some Latin American countries,
during later waves of democratization.8 Hence, they were created or substantially
reformed in the postwar period, in Europe and elsewhere, as part of constitu-
tion-making or constitutional reform processes, following periods of dictatorship
or totalitarian governments:9 as in the Portuguese case, the Constitutional Court
was only created in 1982, eight years after the Democratic Revolution of 1974 and
following a dictatorship that lasted forty-eight years.
My comparative reading and examination of the following examples of con-
stitutional and supreme courts’ architecture is based on the images and data I re-
trieved from different sources, such as courthouse architecture and law and court
literature, and the relevant articles and information found on the web, such as
in the courts’ websites (which I will mention in due course). In regards to the ex-
amples I have chosen, I will analyze the following constitutional, or constitution-
al-like, courts: the German Constitutional Court (relevance and symbolism), as
well as the Austrian, Polish, and Portuguese Constitutional Courts, the Constitu-
tional Court of the Russian Federation, along with the European Court of Justice.
As for the supreme courts, I will examine: the Supreme Courts of the United States
(iconicity), South Africa (political importance), United Kingdom (recent creation),
Brazil, Israel and Iceland (architectural meaning and singular aesthetics).
6 Cf. Gephart: Constitution as Culture, p. 18.

7 Cf. Ginsburg / Garoupa: Building Reputation in Constitutional Courts, p. 541.
8 Ibid., p. 539.
9 Cf. Harding: The Fundamentals of Constitutional Courts, p. 2.
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Constitutions Written in Stone? 45
1. Courthouse Architecture?

First things first: What is it about courthouse architecture? Why is it relevant
to think about buildings in the context of courts? If we think about it, our life
is lived inside and surrounded by buildings. As Goodrich claims,10 buildings are
the materiality of the social, the most visible form of collective presence, its most
evident or demonstrative meaning. Regrettably, court buildings still do not play
a significant role in most research on law and the courts. And yet assessing the
judiciary’s built environment is tremendously important, for its buildings reveal
the social practices, values, and principles that the judiciary upholds.11 According
to Haldar,12 architecture is thus the medium that serves to enforce the law by
sacralizing it within space and place. Consequently, the court building is both a
concrete and a symbolic display of the law’s authority and legitimacy. It is a ma-
terial technological tool at the service of jurisdiction.13 And because jurisdiction
is about the reach of the law, the physical qualities of place that the law defines
are incorporated in the building, and so the court building allows us to see juris-
diction, in Brigham’s words,14 for it defines the territory in which we can hear and
see the law. In sum, courthouse architecture, to use Gephart’s expression,15 serves
to petrify legal culture, expressing a twofold purpose: to state the normative order
of society and to reproduce the power of the law. It is thus remarkable – and here
a first connection between architecture and supreme courts can be established –
that the former president of the Portuguese Supreme Court, in a public speech
given in January 2017 on the occasion of the inauguration of a new courthouse
on the island of Madeira, assigned such importance to courthouse architecture
and buildings, as »the spaces of cognition-recognition of the nature of power, of
the exercise of citizenship and of liaison with the community and the citizens«.16
Courthouse architecture is, consequently, a spatial reflection and manifestation
of social ideology.17
As architecture evolved over time, so did courthouse architecture, which is, in
fact, a quite recent and specialized architectural type. In addition, we cannot for-
get the complexity of the courthouse architectural program:18 the building must
incorporate, on the one hand, the ideologies and subsequent (political, institutional,
10 Cf. Goodrich: Postmodern Justice, p. 190.

11 Cf. Bybee: Judging in Place.
12 Cf. Haldar: In and Out of Court, p. 187.
13 Cf. Ford: Law’s Territory, p. 855.
14 Cf. Brigham: Seeing Jurisdiction.
15 Cf. Gephart / L eko: Introduction: Law and the Arts, p. 17.
16 Discurso do Presidente do Supremo Tribunal de Justiça na inauguração do novo Palácio da
Justiça do Funchal, na Madeira, https://www.stj.pt/?p=5929, last accessed May 6, 2019.
17 Cf. Rosenbloom: Social Ideology, p. 464.
18 Cf. Bels / Branco: Law and Architecture, p. 198.
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46 Patrícia Branco
professional, cultural, symbolic, and social) representations on which judicial pro-

cess and procedure are based and, on the other, a precise functional organization,
with special requirements concerning volumetry and flexibility, lighting, security,
internal organization, technology, and accessibility. And this concerns all types
of court buildings, from the lower to the higher courts, be it in the civil or com-
mon law traditions.
Some initial questions are then in order: Are these supreme and constitutional
courts really different from the lower courts when it comes to the facilities and
buildings that make up courthouse architecture? Or, as a senior Portuguese judge
ironically told me, are they in fact very similar to them, just with »more pomp
and circumstance«?
Put another way, could there be a sort of constitutional and/or supreme archi-
tectural iconology or identity? And could this presumed identity change or vary
on the basis of a centralized (European) or diffuse (American) system of constitu-
tional review, which is also linked to the civil or common law legal cultures and
traditions? Moreover, do these courts really represent the constitutions written
in stone? Or, in other words, can the architecture of constitutional and supreme
courts be referred to as petrified projects of societies’ constitutional aspirations?
2. Architecture, Constitutions, and Politics

Bearing these questions in mind, as well as the intimate connection between con-
stitutions and politics and the possible beliefs or aspirations that might inform the
constitutional projects at work in the buildings and designs of constitutional and
supreme courts, my analysis of these courthouse buildings will be divided into
the following categories: 1. Location; 2. Transcendence; 3. Ancientness; 4. Future;
5. Brightness; 6. Materials; 7. Commodity.
2.1. Location
As Manderson claims, »How and what law means is influenced by where it

means«.19 From Max Weber on, courts have been associated with the urban di-
mension and the place they occupy in the geography of cities.20 So where are these
constitutional and supreme courts located? In most cases in cities – capital cities,
19 Manderson: Interstices: New Work on Legal Spaces, p. 1.

20 Cf. Weber: La città, pp. 59 ff.
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Fig. 1: Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, 2009
in particular. Cities are political programs made visible, says Nowak.21 It is in the
city that the significance of projecting patterns of legitimization of the social order
acquires greater importance, and having courthouses is one such political element
of that visibility22 invoked by Nowak. Thus, the act of choosing to locate the su-
preme and/or constitutional courts in the urban capitals establishes a particular
regime of semiotic relations that can only arise in the capital metropolis,23 where
the other branches of power are also located.
Brazil is an important example in this context: the capital city, Brasilia, is a
clear political project, in which President Kubitschek’s ideal of a new Brazilian
society was institutionalized and made visible through Oscar Niemeyer’s design
(thus giving concretion to Nowak’s argument). Brasilia is a capital city entirely
planned and built ex novo in the late 1950s, whereby the eloquent toponymy of
Praça dos Três Poderes, or Square of the Three Powers, was politically created and
designed to stand as a large open space between the three monumental buildings
representing the three branches of power: the Planalto Palace (the Executive),
the Federal Supreme Court (the Judiciary), and the National Congress (the Legis
lative). As Lauande stated,24 the perception one has is that the open plan of the
square follows without interruption from one building to the other, thus accentu-
ating this intimate relation between law and politics.
The Brazilian example (fig. 1) is illuminating of one such relation when one
considers the phenomena of the judicialization of politics and the politicization of
the judiciary, particularly when the pro-activity of the Federal Supreme Court is
questioned in relation to what is enshrined in the constitution, and the absence
of activity on the part of the legislative, as in the case concerning the recognition
of same-sex marriage in Brazil as a family entity, declared possible by the Fed-
21 Cf. Nowak: Foreword, p. 6.

22 Cf. Nitrato Izzo: Gli Spazi Giuridici, p. 131.
23 Cf. Mohr: Living Legal Fictions, p. 245; Nitrato Izzo: Gli Spazi Giuridici, pp. 128 ff.
24 Cf. Lauande: Oscar Niemeyer: erudição e sensibilidade.
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48 Patrícia Branco
eral Supreme Court in 2011. Consequently, the spatial relationship established by

both buildings in the piazza is even more ironic: the architectural perception of
continuity from building to building pointed out is really just a trompe l’oeil, an
optical illusion, where the lack of dialogue between the three powers emerges as
an actual interruption.
Thinking about the Israeli example is also important in this framework: as
Ram Karmi, one of the architects involved, wrote, the relationship between the
Supreme Court and the city of Jerusalem is not incidental – actually, this complex
is comparable to Brasilia’s, as pointed out by Resnik and Curtis.25 According to Ada
Karmi-Melamede, the other architect, one of the keyfactors that influenced the
Supreme Court building’s design was, in fact, the location itself – its vistas and the
structure of the city.26 Ram Karmi said that »in it we can see a small city,27 a min-
iature of Jerusalem«, where the internal division of the court in four autonomous
parts (library, judges’ chambers, courtrooms and registry, and parking facilities)
takes over the division of the city from Roman military times, the four axes of
cardo and decumanus, hence establishing a line from the court to the Knesset, the
parliament (south), and to the Israel Museum (north), and situating the court at
the entry point to the National Precinct, the governmental center of Israel, in the
western part of Jerusalem (east-west axes).28 The building, completed in 1992, also
has a view of the Bank of Israel – there is thus a triangular relationship between
the judicial, the executive, the legislative, and the economic powers. But the court
is also in close proximity to the city;29 it is part of Jerusalem and connects to it.
Location also has to be considered when the staging of justice imposes itself
onto the city and its citizens.30 According to paragraph 50 of the guidelines on
the organization and accessibility of court premises, adopted by the European
Commission for the Efficiency of Justice in 2014,31 »courthouses are generally
built in an elevated position – a distinct, enclosed and sacrosanct place«. This
could be pointed to in reference to the European Court of Justice, established in
1952, whose building stands on the Kirchberg plateau above the city of Luxem-
bourg, requiring a special trip to get there since the plateau is actually outside of
the city.32 The combination of precise architectural and urbanistic actions, like
25
Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Representing Justice, p. 208.
26
Cf. ibid., p. 209.
27 Interestingly, Renzo Piano, the Genoese architect who designed the new Tribunal de Paris,
has made a similar statement: »A palace of justice is like a small city that has so many different things
that must be done in a harmonic manner.« http://www.ca-paris.justice.fr/art_pix/APIJ_PJP_Depli
ant_110x205_lecture.pdf, last accessed February 19, 2018.
28 Cf. Karmi: Palazzo della Corte Suprema di Israele, p. 165.
29 Cf. Haldar: In and Out of Court, p. 193.
31 Cf. European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice: Guidelines.
32 Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Representing Justice, p. 233.
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the court’s position raised above the ordinary city level, gives the impression that
the city of Luxembourg – and, metaphorically speaking, the European Union
Member States – is thus subordinated to an order that is trying to represent itself,
judicially and politically, as a court with supranational powers implementing the
Union’s constitutional values. We cannot forget that Luxembourg was given offi-
cial status as one of the capitals of the European Union (EU ) by the 1992 Treaty
of Maastricht (alongside Brussels and Strasbourg): this political arrangement is
thus symbolically noteworthy.
2.2. Transcendence
If constitutions are the normative superior order of society,33 the Grundgesetz, they
will probably require a Grundgericht located in a Grundgebäude. Consequently,
supreme and constitutional courthouses may be seen to possess a quasi-religious
significance34 or, as Commaille35 would say, are buildings that seek to represent
the constitution’s transcendence.
What kind of architecture would be able to transmit such a sacred connection?
In the United States, architect Cass Gilbert thought that he had to search for such
an association in antiquity,36 in Greco-Roman temples, that is, and apply it to the
Supreme Court building. This Greco-Roman monumentality serves not only as a
symbol of the legitimate exercise of a strong political power ruling society37 – also
representing a link to democracy38 – but its reference to the temple is the archi-
tectural manifestation of a secular attempt to sacralize and mythify the judicial
institution and the country’s constitutional and legal cultures. As Rosenfeld as-
serts, American national identity is marked by its constitutional identity,39 and for
approximately the last eighty years much of this is owed to the Supreme Court
building and the ubiquity of its image, which we have come to identify as the legal
image of law and justice in the United States.40 This temple-like courthouse can
thus be seen as the sacred site of a constitutional cult that verges on the religious.41
But even when architects seem to have used a different architectural grammar,
as in Brazil’s case (fig.1), what Niemeyer did was to take the elements of the Greek
temple – the columns, the volume, the symmetry, and repetitive use of shapes –

34 Cf. DesBaillets: Representing Canadian Justice, p. 133.
35 Cf. Commaille: À quoi nous sert le droit, p. 56.
36 Cf. DesBaillets: Representing Canadian Justice, p. 133.
37 Cf. Commaille: À quoi nous sert le droit, p. 58.
38 Cf. Mulcahy: Legal Architecture, p. 117.
39 Cf. Rosenfeld: The Problem of »Identity«, p. 2.
40 Cf. Brigham: Material Law, pp. 145–154.
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50 Patrícia Branco
Fig. 2: Supreme Court of Israel, 1998
and insert this classical language in the modernist aesthetics, thus turning the
modernist imaginary into a new classic,42 a new sacrality. Karmi too, reporting to
the Israeli Supreme Court, declared that the use of a classical style of architecture
expresses a harmony that is resistant to the passage of time and is thus capable of
linking the present to the past, in an entanglement of memory, influences, and cul-
tures, transcending us all.43 Therefore, resorting to a revered architectural model
serves to materialize belief in the hierarchy, power, and authority of constitutional
or fundamental law:44 the form hence invokes the notion of a universal justice.
In the Israeli case, there is another interesting element that evokes hierarchy
and transcendence and is intimately linked to the superiority of the basic norm,
the Grundnorm in Kelsen’s terms: it is the copper-clad pyramid, green-tinted to
look old from oxidation (see fig. 2).45 Like the Grundnorm, which guarantees va-
lidity to the legal system, conferring unity on the plurality of norms,46 this pyra-
mid not only represents the constitution as the fundamental law and the transna-
tional character of the law and its sources, it also points to this court as the highest
court in Israel. Moreover, it evokes a biblical reference (to Absalom’s tomb) – thus
reinforcing its sacredness.
42 Cf. Lauande: Oscar Niemeyer: erudição e sensibilidade.

44 Cf. Wardle: Legal Façades, p. 533.
46 Cf. Kelsen: Dottrina Pura.
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Fig. 3: Supreme Court of the United States, 2007
2.3. Ancientness
Architects such as Gilbert, Niemeyer, or Karmi, looked to the past in search of

models. Society tends to ascribe erudition to history, to consider elderly people
with reverence. Age here plays an important role, so by making buildings look
old and historical, a relationship of trust is created. We have confidence in the
institution and endow more respect to these courts and to what they stand for;
they are infused with meaning – they appear familiar and are recognizable and
acceptable to the initiated and lay alike.47
The Supreme Court of the United States (fig. 3) dates from 1935,48 but it seems
older, ancient. It was actually designed to look old, as if it had been in place since
the birth of the country,49 wrote Resnik and Curtis. There is, indeed, a »time
honored disguise«50 in its architecture that materializes the hierarchy of the con-
stitution and the stratification between the different courts, and between the law,
the institution, and citizens. It suggests a traditional framing of ritual and proce-
dure, and an immemorial origin of the law and law makers.51 Furthermore, this
47 Cf. Ahl / Tieben: Modern Chinese Court Buildings, p. 621.

48 Until then the Court had had a peripatetic existence for more than a century. Cf. Spaulding:
The Enclosure of Justice, p. 314.
49 Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Inventing Democratic Courts, p. 207.
50 Wardle: Legal Façades, p. 525.
51 Cf. Evans: Theatre of Deferral, p. 8; Resnik / Curtis: Inventing Democratic Courts, p. 208.
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52 Patrícia Branco
association with an ancient design imprints the court, and the constitution, with
a sense of being authoritative, legitimate, everlasting, universal, and constant.52
Nevertheless, this ancientness is also found in buildings that were adapted to
function as courthouses. The Austrian Constitutional Court is one such example.
It has been located since 2012 in a building designed in the 1920s to function as
a bank, featuring neoclassicist elements. And as you can read from the court’s
website,53 architects Gotthilf and Neumann took inspiration, with this choice of
architectural style, from the forms of antiquity and invoked notions of consistency,
security, honorability, and ancientness. The same happened in Portugal, when
the Ratton Palace, built in the nineteenth century and featuring a neoclassical
design, was chosen as the Constitutional Court’s location54 in 1982 (in 2009 a new
building was added to the structure, where judges’ and court officials’ chambers,
as well as a public auditorium, are located).
In other cases, the adapted buildings are historical and share their memories
with those of the country at large. That is the case with the Polish Constitutional
Tribunal, located in Warsaw (sitting since 1995 in a building erected in the 1910s),
or the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, located in Saint Peters-
burg (where it has occupied an eighteenth-century building since 2008). In both
cases, the neoclassical architecture is almost secondary: it is the time-worn walls
and their political, historical, and social significance to the place and country in
question, somehow suggesting a glorious past, that made them suitable and hon-
ored locations.55
History and ancientness feature too in the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court
location and building, created in 2009 (fig. 4). The court is situated opposite the
Houses of Parliament, and flanked by the Treasury and Westminster Abbey, in a
triangulation of powers, secular and religious.
As you can read from the court’s website, »the home of The Supreme Court is
the former Middlesex Guildhall, an impressive building in an historic location
directly linked with justice and the law for nearly a millennium«.56 Thus, an-
cientness is also linked to sacredness and transcendence, as the court’s location was
already part of Westminster Abbey’s Sanctuary Tower complex. There is, indeed,
a powerful connection with the abbey, as if the shadow of this religious building
could provide divine protection to the Supreme Court, itself located in a building
52
Cf. Wardle: Legal Façades, p. 532; Ahl / Tieben: Modern Chinese Court Buildings, p. 621.
53
https://www.vfgh.gv.at/verfassungsgerichtshof/building.en.html, last accessed August 18, 2020.
54
Cf. http://www.tribunalconstitucional.pt/visita.html, last accessed August 18, 2020.
55 Cf. http://trybunal.gov.pl/en/about-the-tribunal/constitutional-tribunal/history-of-the-
building/; and http://www.ksrf.ru/en/Info/Building/Pages/default.aspx, last accessed August 18,
2020.
56 https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/history.html, last accessed August 18, 2020.
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Fig. 4: Supreme Court of the United King-

dom, 2013
resembling a Gothic church (the Middlesex Guildhall, which was built in 1913 and
had previously housed two courts and the offices of Middlesex County Council).
Gothic architecture is, in point of fact, intimately connected with the spaces of
English justice, as in the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, and this architec-
tural style came to be considered quintessentially English in style, evoking Eng-
land’s past and well suited to representing the antique nature of the law.57 This is
rather curious, and emblematic, for two reasons: firstly, and as mentioned before,
the court was only created in 2009, so it has a very recent history; and secondly, un-
like other countries, the UK does not have a single constitutional document – con-
stitutional principles are scattered across several documents and unwritten sources,
which Parliament can change.58 Middlesex Guildhall was therefore a conscious
choice, as if the building’s architecture and style could lend historicity and mem-
ory, and thus legitimacy and authority, to a court that is quite novel and in search
of identification, an identification distinct from both government and parliament.
It serves as the architectural tool that embodies and materializes that »defining
moment in the constitutional history of the United Kingdom: transferring judicial

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54 Patrícia Branco
authority away from the House of Lords, and creating a Supreme Court«,59 one
that has been accorded normative supremacy as the highest court in the country.
Like Greco-Roman and neoclassical architecture, Gothic revival or nouveau
Gothic, as a revered architectural style, imprints the courthouse buildings with
a clear message: courts are important places in which users must reflect upon the
significance of the law60 and, where relevant, upon the supremacy of the constitu-
tion. Furthermore, these historical, or historically disguised, buildings give sub-
stance to the conviction that the law is historically grounded and hierarchically
everlasting. In addition, it accords the recent constitutional and supreme courts a
place within the judicial structures of their own countries.
2.4. Future
Knowing the past and looking at the future. Nothing lasts forever; and the law
changes as do political regimes and, with them, constitutions.
German architect Paul Baumgarten was aware of this, and he wanted to leave
that message in the building of the newly created (Federal Constitutional Court
Act, 1951) German Federal Constitutional Court (until 1969 the Court had been lo-
cated in the Prinz-Max-Palais, constructed in the 1880s, and located in the center
of Karlsruhe61). It was the aftermath of the Third Reich, and with the new con-
stitution, power derived from the people, requiring that laws be made in a trans-
parent process which citizens can control. The new German Constitutional Court,
the Bundesverfassungsgericht, was the first entirely new constitutional jurisdiction
established in postwar Europe,62 was uncontaminated by any Nazi past, and was
regarded as the guarantor of the new democratic regime.63 As such, the building
had to be able to manifest this, in a clear style. That is why Baumgarten avoided
symmetrical arches, monumental columns, or other symbols of authority, which he
understood would not represent the people but would only express power (fig. 5).64
Baumgarten thus wanted the building to convey transparency and dignity, a
constitutional principle enshrined in the Grundgesetz. The dignity of a legal sys-
tem completely different and distant from the previous one, and a new and trans-
parent political pact, designed to protect civil rights from state infringement.65
59
https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/history.html, last accessed August 18, 2020.
60
Cf. Mulcahy: Architects of Justice.
61 Cf. http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/EN/Gebaeude/gebaeude_node.html, last ac-
cessed August 18, 2020.
62 Cf. Garlicki: Constitutional Courts versus Supreme Courts, p. 50.
64 Cf. Jaeger: An Architectural Icon Resurrected.
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Fig. 5: German Federal Constitutional Court (Courtroom Building),

2005
As Ginsburg and Garoupa have argued, the court’s first decisions were mainly
political and directed at a political audience, deciding many important questions
about the political process.66
The 1969 building,67 located in Karlsruhe – the city considered the seat of
German justice –, features a modernist style of architecture, where glass walls
are infused with symbolism (the building was renovated between 2011 and 2014).
There is a permanent perspectival dialectic, which translates into a process of
accountability: a view from the outside (the city, the country, the world) into the
court’s interior (where the interpretation and application of the law take place);
and a view from the court’s interior (judges) outward (to the world, the polis, the
public). Through the building, the court seeks to manifest self-confidence in its
function and decisions and at the same time deserve our trust in its operation and
application of the constitution.
It is also interesting to relate this building to the main building of the Federal
Court of Justice (BGH ),68 also located in Karlsruhe, with its imperial dome and
neobaroque style: its classical lines and monumentality are in sharp contrast to
Baumgarten’s ideals. This can also be read as a manifestation of the courts’ rela-

67 This building is listed as a monument.
68 More information on this court can be found here: http://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/Shared
Docs/Downloads/EN/BGH/brochure.pdf;jsessionid=A322DEE87D6A35930FB765EEC5603406.1_
cid294?__blob=publicationFile, last accessed August 18, 2020.
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56 Patrícia Branco
Fig. 6: Constitutional Court of South Africa, 2014
tionship to each other: as we know, a decision by the BGH , the highest court in the
system of ordinary jurisdiction, can be reversed only by the Federal Constitutional
Court in rare cases, when matters of constitutionality are involved.
According to Wardle,69 whereas neoclassical architecture expresses the belief
in the eternality of legal regimes, modernist or postmodernist architecture, with
its diverse array of styles, fosters the belief that norms and legal regimes can be
drastically altered.
The Constitutional Court of South Africa (200470) is another example seeking
to convey a transformative constitutionalism through architecture and internal
design, displaying the country’s yearning to look ahead, into a brighter future
(fig. 6).71
At the same time, the court’s architecture seeks to honor the site,72 the Consti-
tution Hill district in Johannesburg, and the nation’s history, in its progression
from oppression to freedom and democracy, and to integrate into the neighbor-
hood’s present.73 The Court’s symbolic architecture thus seeks to re-anchor this

70 The Constitutional Court was established in 1994, and during its first ten years it was located
in rented premises. See https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/about-us/the-building, last accessed
August 18, 2020.
71 DesBaillets: Representing Canadian Justice, p. 133.
72 The court complex sits on the remnants of the Old Fort Prison, Johannesburg’s notorious prison,
where Nelson Mandela, and other opponents of apartheid, were imprisoned. Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Rep-
resenting Justice, p. 352.
73 Cf. MacIver: Lessons from South Africa.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
institution not only in a defined space but also in history, in a non-regressive way.74
As Nelson Mandela said, »Rising from the ashes of that ghastly era [apartheid],
it will shine forth as a pledge for all time that South Africa will never return to
that abyss.«75
The courthouse,76 designed by South African architects Masojada, Makin, and
Wygers (working in partnership between their firms, Urban Solutions and OMM
Design Workshop), is noted, too, for its transparency, and it does not feature any
marble cladding or wood paneling – thus avoiding any links to existing court-
houses and designs, and the past they evoked. The need for a different and more
inclusive representation of justice (and the choice of the baobab tree as the court’s
logo is quite significant in this respect) in a legal system in transition, such that
its exercise is recognizable to everyone, is achieved by enhancing the public di-
mension and value of architecture and art, as evidenced by the building and the
numerous artworks inside it.77 Hence, in the South African case, parallel to the
German Federal Constitutional Court, architecture manifests a break with the
past and reflects the aspiration for a more democratic, pluralist, and multicultural
society, both now and in the future.
2.5. Brightness
Constitutions and constitutional treaties serve as a lighthouse, a beacon, a source of

brightness or inspiration for national and supranational aspirations for democracy
and the democratic rule of law. Their courts must shine as well, not only in terms
of how they interpret the law but also in the way their buildings are designed.
One of the most interesting examples in this context is the European Court of
Justice, especially Perrault’s 2008 intervention to extend the building. It concerns
not just the two towers but also the foyer and the grand courtroom, with its giant
gold flower, all infused by this »golden brown texture like sun«.78 The sun that
shines bright – and so the court allows the sunlight in, to create a warm ambiance,
as Perrault explained.79 But there is more to it: the idea of a golden architecture
may reflect the political dimension of the EU ’s conventions and treaties, with the
golden ring serving as a metaphor for the EU ’s aspiration to an encompassing com-
74 Cf. Garapon: La Symbolique du Futur Tribunal de Paris, p. 18.

75 https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/about-us/the-building, last accessed August 18, 2020.
76 It is South Africa’s first major post-apartheid government building. Cf. ibd.
78 »Golden Brown« is a song by the English rock band the Stranglers, from their sixth album, La
Folie, and released as a 7« single in December 1981. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Brown,
last accessed 19. 2. 2018.
79 Cf. http://www.perraultarchitecture.com/en/projects/2463-court_of_justice_of_the_euro
pean_union.html, last accessed August 18, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
58 Patrícia Branco
Fig. 7: European Court of Justice (towers), 2014
munity made of its member states, where sunlight or a sun-like decor illuminates
the court’s judges when deliberating, trying to bridge different legal traditions.80
The ring, where the offices of the judges and advocates general and the delibera-
tion rooms are located, and where draft judgments and conclusions are prepared,
constitutes, in fact, the heart of the jurisdiction.81
Perrault’s extension, and particularly the golden towers (fig. 7), can also be read
as an extension of the ECJ ’s own jurisdiction: visually high, dominating the sur-
roundings and evolving upward to the skies above, in an architectural manifes-
tation of the court’s interference in areas that were not anticipated in earlier peri-
ods, thus symbolizing how the ECJ has become one of the dominant institutions
of the European Union. Again, its golden colors seem to indicate the way the ECJ
has been the source – the italics are intended – from which European law and its
constitutional core values have been implemented and expanded.82
The Israeli Supreme Court’s light-colored stone exteriors are also important in
this framework (fig. 2). Actually, light-colored stone exteriors are a requirement

81 Cf. Brochure of the European Court of Justice, p. 43.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
in Jerusalem’s edifices.83 When the stone is exposed to the sun, as Karmi ex-
plained,84 it gives back a warmer, lighter, and more humane light. The whiteness
of the local limestone used thus reminds everyone »that this is Jerusalem, the law
with capital L that precedes time and legislators«.85 There seems to be some com-
plicity between brightness and perpetuity, on the one hand, and with a sense of
belonging, on the other, since the building is integrated into the city’s landscape
and is made to be part of Jerusalem’s history, contained also in the bright color
of its walls. Courts, however, are considered the most segregated and segregating
public buildings in a city; and their walls are meant to separate the parties of the
trial from events in the outside world.86 But in Jerusalem the court wants to fit in,
be it within the jurisdiction or the city. There is a kind of ambiguous interaction
here, between the court, the function it must play, and its local audience, which
the light color of the walls means, perhaps, to soften.
2.6. Materials
Materials are also important in this assessment of constitutional and supreme

courts. My title refers to stone. Stone is a common material in courthouses, be it
limestone, marble, or volcanic basalt, as in the Supreme Court of Iceland’s build-
ing87 designed by Studio Granda (1996), located in the center of Reykjavik. More
than just a common material, it has a quality that can endure the passage of time.
Stone is thus a symbol of eternity, conveying the belief that the law is everlasting.
Unlike stone, glass, which can be considered a common material in the post-
modernist period, can break. However, it is a recyclable material and can be used
time and time again, thus representing change,88 hopefully for the better. It is
also a revealing material and can thus emulate transparency89 – the transpar-
ency of the judicial institution, the transparency of the law, and ultimately the
transparency of democracy – by communicating openness to public scrutiny and
83 Cf. ibid., p. 211.

85 Ibid., p. 165.
86 Cf. Ahl / Tieben: Modern Chinese Court Buildings, p. 611.
87 Cf. https://www.haestirettur.is/en/, last accessed August 18, 2020. See also LeCuyer: Studio
Granda.
88 According to Wardle, and giving glass a different reading, postmodernist courthouses do not
seem to project the eternality of the law in the same manner as neoclassical courthouses, where stone
abounds. Cf. Wardle: Legal Façades, p. 543.
89 According to the Genoese architect Renzo Piano, transparent buildings are safer because
people are able to see through them to what happens inside. https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/19/
renzo-piano-interview-maestros-documentary-new-york-times-building-transparency-movie/, last
accessed August 19, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
60 Patrícia Branco
accountability to the community.90 However, as authors argue,91 glass façades, as

a technological innovation, came to be fashionable and can thus be found in an
array of buildings, like airports, for example, and so to equate it with the law’s
transparency and accessibility may not be accurate and can actually result in cyn-
icism.92 Then again, the gravitas of stone is also to be found in many buildings
which are not courthouses, such as public museums and libraries, or even banks.
Equally important are wood (the tree of justice is symbolically inserted in the
courtrooms’ wooden panels and furniture) and metal – copper and steel, for ex-
ample (as in the Israeli pyramid or in the Icelandic Court, respectively).
The buildings are thus infused with the five elements, and energies, of the an-
cient Chinese calendar93 – wood, fire, earth, metal, and water (which can be found
in the nearby Atlantic ocean, in the Icelandic case) – which discipline human in-
teraction in relation to the cycles of the day, seasons, and moon. They invoke mys-
tique, sacredness, and belief, much like constitutions, which require a symbolic
effort of constitutional belief in order to be effective.94
2.7. Commodity
As has been argued, courthouse architecture and interiors display many common
features or attributes across borders, regardless of local variation95 (budgets, avail-
able materials, and the standards relating to the organization of court space are
of great importance). Courthouse buildings and the different shapes or styles they
mean to embody are also imposed by architectural tendencies over time, as well
as new trends in a globalizing market for courthouse architecture that seem to
result in the homogenization of the buildings,96 since architects move from juris-
diction to jurisdiction, and architectural and engineering standards are transna-
tional. Some of these building projects involved public competitions and/or have
received architectural prizes and awards (like the South African and Icelandic
cases, for example). Internationally renowned architects, from Niemeyer to Per-
rault, have been contracted to design these court buildings, turning them into
architectural icons (yet quite similar in a context of cultural globalization and
urban standardization), which, set alongside the significant allocation of public
90
Cf. Mulcahy: Legal Architecture, p. 152.
91
Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Representing Justice, pp. 340 ff.; Marrani: A evolução pós-moderna dos
espaços da justiça.
93 Cf. https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-zodiac/china-five-elements-philo
sophy.htm, last accessed August 18, 2020.
94 Cf. Gephart: Constitution as Culture.
95 Cf. Resnik / Curtis / Tait: Constructing Courts, p. 516.
96 Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Representing Justice.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
funds, either to build, adapt, or renovate them – and the numbers are really im-
pressive and expressive – reflect the status given to them by governments and
supranational institutions.
3. Concluding Remarks: Pomp and Circumstance?

Trying to answer the initial question (Are these courts really different from the
lower courts in terms of their architectural design and program?), my reply is
somewhat ambivalent: yes and no. Of course, they are similar with regard to the
functional program – they have to be: they need to house judges’ chambers, offi-
cials, registry and courtrooms, and other rooms that are required for a courthouse
to be fully operational. But is it really just »pomp and circumstance« that makes
them different?
I think there is more to it, although I do not believe there is a defined iconology
or identity regarding constitutional or supreme courts, and the buildings, in my
opinion, do not reflect different constitutional systems. Nevertheless, these courts
are part of a political program, and the laws that created them have structured
our understanding of those spaces and edifices. In either common or civil law
traditions, architects (with their own world visions and architectural principles
and aspirations) have turned to the architectural style of their preference (and the
materials available, locally and technically), be it neoclassical, nouveau Gothic, or
postmodern, the one they have considered capable of conveying the significance
of the institution. Nonetheless, they have designed buildings that have, on a large
scale, contributed to the validity of the constitutional order, by creating edifices
that came to be recognized as the highest courts of their respective countries or
regions. Therefore, the edifices have themselves radically transformed the appli-
cation and effect of constitutional law, and our experience and understanding of
it.97 By combining location, materials, architectural styles, trends and expertise,
colors, and brightness, and evoking past, present, and future, architects recognize
which aspects of society they need to pander to in order to get the building through
the system and thus give concretion to decision- and law-makers’ demands – they
transform social ideology into the built environment. In that sense, architects too
need to have a political instinct in order to get the buildings built.98 And they have
thus turned these courts from abstract entities into meaningful places, places that
do not intend to fossilize political programs but instead must foster societies’ con-
stitutional aspirations, no matter how hard the present times seem to be.
97 Cf. Manderson: Interstices: New Work on Legal Spaces, p. 1.

98 Cf. LeCuyer: Studio Granda, p. 28.
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62 Patrícia Branco
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Table of Illustrations
Fig. 1: Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, 2009; source: Cayambe, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22132681
Fig. 2: Supreme Court of Israel, 1998; Source: Moshe Milner (Government Press
Office, Israel), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?cur
id=22808490
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
Fig. 3: Supreme Court of the United States, 2007; source: Kjetil Ree, CC BY-SA 3.0,
Fig. 4: Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, 2013; source: Smuconlaw, CC BY-SA
4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37114030
Fig. 5: German Federal Constitutional Court (Courtroom Building), Karlsruhe,

2005; source: Tobias Helfrich, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=42560
Fig. 6: Constitutional Court of South Africa, 2014; source: Mihi tr, CC BY 4.0,
Fig. 7: Towers of Court of Justice of the European Union, in Kirchberg, Luxem-

bourg City, Luxembourg, 2008; source: Razvan Orendovici, CC BY 2.0, https://
commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34956469
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783465145516-43

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Patrícia Branco

Constitutions Written in Stone?

1 Cf. Branco: Os Tribunais como Espaços; Branco: Courthouses as Spaces of Recognition.

6 Cf. Gephart: Constitution as Culture, p. 18.

1. Courthouse Architecture?

10 Cf. Goodrich: Postmodern Justice, p. 190.

professional, cultural, symbolic, and social) representations on which judicial pro-

2. Architecture, Constitutions, and Politics

As Manderson claims, »How and what law means is influenced by where it

19 Manderson: Interstices: New Work on Legal Spaces, p. 1.

Fig. 1: Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, 2009

21 Cf. Nowak: Foreword, p. 6.

eral Supreme Court in 2011. Consequently, the spatial relationship established by

33 Cf. Gephart: Constitution as Culture, p. 20.

Fig. 2: Supreme Court of Israel, 1998

42 Cf. Lauande: Oscar Niemeyer: erudição e sensibilidade.

Fig. 3: Supreme Court of the United States, 2007

Architects such as Gilbert, Niemeyer, or Karmi, looked to the past in search of

47 Cf. Ahl / Tieben: Modern Chinese Court Buildings, p. 621.

Fig. 4: Supreme Court of the United King-

57 Cf. Mulcahy: Legal Architecture, p. 118.

Fig. 5: German Federal Constitutional Court (Courtroom Building),

66 Cf. Ginsburg / Garoupa: Building Reputation in Constitutional Courts, p. 557.

Fig. 6: Constitutional Court of South Africa, 2014

69 Cf. Wardle: Legal Façades, p. 544.

Constitutions and constitutional treaties serve as a lighthouse, a beacon, a source of

74 Cf. Garapon: La Symbolique du Futur Tribunal de Paris, p. 18.

Fig. 7: European Court of Justice (towers), 2014

80 Cf. Resnik / Curtis: Representing Justice, p. 233.

Materials are also important in this assessment of constitutional and supreme

83 Cf. ibid., p. 211.

accountability to the community.90 However, as authors argue,91 glass façades, as

3. Concluding Remarks: Pomp and Circumstance?

97 Cf. Manderson: Interstices: New Work on Legal Spaces, p. 1.

the Arts. Elective Affinities and Relationships of Tension, Frankfurt am Main

Fig. 5: German Federal Constitutional Court (Courtroom Building), Karlsruhe,

Fig. 7: Towers of Court of Justice of the European Union, in Kirchberg, Luxem-

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