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In March, while on a research visit in Prague, Jakub Drap\u00e1l was kind enough to take us to court. Luckily, this was literally, not figuratively. Despite studying sentencing for a living, a lot of my understanding is acquired through the mediated lens of court files and statistics or filtered through the words and understanding of sentencers. What we wanted to test in Prague was whether direct court observation was worth building into the project’s methodology beyond the Slovenian context, and if so, what that would actually look like. Sitting in on a hearing in a language I don’t speak seemed like a good place to start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There is an obvious objection to observing a proceeding in a foreign language: you’ll miss everything that matters. Law is language (Sko\u010dir & Plesni\u010dar, 2025). The charges, the arguments, the judgment \u2014 these are all words with very specific meanings. What’s left if you strip those out?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||6px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Possibly, quite a lot. When you can’t follow the content, you start reading everything else: the room, the bodies in the room, the interactions, the silences. The moments when someone’s expression diverges from the tone of their voice. You notice who is sitting and who is standing, who has papers and who does not, who looks at whom and when. You become, involuntarily, an ethnographer of surface, and surface carries a remarkable amount of information. I have 15 pages of notes to prove that.<\/p>\n
This is precisely what Roach Anleu et al. (2016) found in their systematic courtroom observation work: that a busy courtroom produces more simultaneous information than any single observer can capture, and that the non-verbal and interactional dimensions are among the first things lost when attention narrows to content alone.<\/p>\n
That said, perhaps surprisingly, I didn’t understand nothing. Courtroom language has a grammar that seems to transcend the local. When the judge’s tone shifted from procedural to admonishing, I felt it before I could name it. At one point near the end, I caught a phrase that needed no translation: the cadence of next time, it will be more serious<\/em> is apparently universal, some registers simply don’t need a dictionary.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” header_3_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/16.png” title_text=”16″ align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Before our hearing even began, things happened that framed the experience \u2013 how we entered the court, how we figured out where to go, how we were welcomed. The room itself set the stage: warm wood panelling, an emblem on the wall, an open window letting in street noise. The judge, prosecutor, and typist each had desks stacked with papers and screens, while the defendant, without counsel, had nothing. That asymmetry was among the first things I wrote down, emphasised by how they were dressed. The judge’s and prosecutor’s robes clearly messaged professionalism and authority; even the typist’s plain but professional clothes differed importantly from the way the defendant was dressed.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||26px|||” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_cta button_text=”Click Here” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#E02B20″ background_enable_image=”off” custom_margin=”3px|||||” custom_padding=”53px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{%22gcid-primary-color%22:%91%22button_text_color%22,%22button_text_color%22%93}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Before our hearing even began, things happened that framed the experience.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_cta][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”1px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n He also arrived twenty minutes late. The judge called him on her phone, gave him directions, and was visibly a little annoyed. When he finally appeared, he didn’t have ID. She asked him questions to verify his identity: parents, siblings, birthplace, and we could watch her decide, as he answered, that yes, this was the right person. She looked at him the whole time she spoke.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n The prosecutor read the charges while the defendant sat with a creased-collar kind of air, not quite meeting anyone’s gaze. Then the judge addressed him directly, asking what he thought, what his options were. She looked at him throughout. The prosecutor, meanwhile, read his papers and occasionally exchanged a glance with the judge. When the defendant spoke (at length) the prosecutor looked away. He frowned. He looked unconvinced. (Jakub told me the defendant had cheerfully confessed to not paying taxes. The prosecutor’s face suggested he had heard this before.)<\/p>\n The most striking detail came when Jakub explained, quietly, that the defendant had been sentenced by penal order two weeks earlier \u2013 and hadn’t even known. The order had gone to his father’s address and he wasn’t aware that it had happened. The judge had to deliver her own case, but was also a carrier of new of the previous one.<\/p>\n Throughout the hearing the typist would occasionally start typing. I guess when you don’t understand the language, other sounds become more important. To me her typing was incomprehensibly loud, while others in the room seemed to barely notice it.<\/p>\n At the end, the judge gave her decision, explained what she had considered, and delivered her final (universally understood) line: I hope I don’t see you again. If I do, it will be more severe.<\/em> The defendant nodded. He looked sorry, or at the very least, produced the face of sorry.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||4px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” header_3_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|7px|0px|7px|false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ box_shadow_style=”preset1″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n A few things stayed with me that resonate with important findings I remember.<\/p>\n The human in the role.<\/strong> The judge was far from performing detachment. She was engaged, slightly exasperated, then firm. At the informal close of the session she turned to us and asked, openly: what do you do with someone like this? He just keeps accumulating sentences.<\/em> It was, Jakub said, a frank exchange, mixing legal and practical considerations, thinking out loud about whether any of the available instruments were actually working. Not the inscrutability one might expect. This resonates with what Jeromelj (2024) describes in her work on criminal lawyers as emotional labourers: the management of emotion is not a departure from professional role, but constitutive of it. And as Bergman Blix and Wettergren (2019) have shown, judicial objectivity is less a stable state than an ongoing interactional achievement: something performed, negotiated, and occasionally visible at its seams.<\/p>\n The layer of professionalisation.<\/strong> The judge, prosecutor, and typist shared a common institutional language: robes, forms of address, procedural scripts, the rhythm of dictation and typing. The defendant was outside all of it. He answered questions and made arguments and looked sorry, but he was always responding to a structure he hadn’t helped design and couldn’t fully read. Tata (2020) calls this “ritual individualisation”, that is the way sentencing professionals collectively perform institutional roles that process the defendant rather than engage with them as an equal participant. That is not necessarily unfair, but it definitely carries meaning and brings consequences.<\/p>\n What accumulation means.<\/strong> The defendant had been in prison a couple of times before this hearing and had multiple prior suspended sentences. And yet the recommendation was another suspended sentence, with probation. The judge seemed genuinely frustrated by the logic of the situation, not by him as such. The system kept producing the same answer. At what point does that become the problem? The tension is a familiar one: suspended sentences are designed as a humane alternative to immediate imprisonment, yet their accumulation can create exactly the kind of revolving-door dynamic that Dr\u00e1pal, Krajewski, and Tripkovi\u0107 (2026) document across Central and Eastern Europe, where the instrument’s flexibility can become a source of systemic incoherence.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” header_3_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Assuming observation is worth doing (and I definitely think it is) a number of harder questions follow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/15.png” title_text=”15″ align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n What are we actually trying to see?<\/strong> This sounds obvious but it isn’t. If the goal is to understand how sentencing decisions are made, observation gives you the performance of decision-making, not necessarily the decision-making itself. The judge’s reasoning was invisible to me; what I could see was how she communicated it, how she held herself, how the room responded. That might be exactly what we need or it might be a very elaborate way of studying the wrong thing. I genuinely don’t know yet.<\/p>\n Do we need a theoretical lens, and if so, which one?<\/strong> Bourdieu would have us look at the courtroom as a field \u2013 at the distribution of capital, the habitus of the professionals, the way the defendant’s cultural and social position determines how much of the institutional game they can even play. Latour would redirect attention to the non-human actors: the papers, the screens, the microphones, the robes, the emblem on the wall \u2013 the material infrastructure through which legal authority is assembled. Both feel relevant, Latour possibly more so. Both would pull the observation in different directions. And I find myself wondering whether the choice of lens is something you make in advance, or something that the fieldwork eventually forces on you. Perhaps the more honest and more poetic answer is that you arrive with a loose sensibility and the courtroom tells you what it needs?<\/p>\n Do we need more than one observer?<\/strong> Roach Anleu et al. (2016) make a compelling case that two researchers are better than one precisely because courtrooms are too dense and too fast for a single pair of eyes. We were two in Prague (in addition to Jakub who was simultaneously guide, interpreter, and fellow observer). We all had extremely different prior knowledge and expectations as well as different points of interest. But in the discussion after, we found common grounds as well as diverging opinions on what we observed.<\/p>\n Will it look different elsewhere?<\/strong> This is perhaps the question I’m most uncertain about. The Prague hearing was a specific kind of proceeding, in a specific legal culture, in a specific building, with a specific judge who happened to be unusually warm and communicative. How much of what I observed was Czech, how much was continental law, how much post-socialism, how much this particular court, and how much simply universal courthouse grammar? I don’t have a baseline, or, rather, I have our own Slovenian system as a baseline, but I know it too well, for it to feel comparable. But I would really really want to know. That’s partly the point of comparative observation, but it also means the first observation is always provisional, always a hypothesis waiting to be tested somewhere else.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” header_3_font=”Mojca-123-slo|–et_global_heading_font_weight|||||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n I left with more questions than I arrived with, which is usually a sign that something useful happened.<\/p>\n I don’t know what the defendant actually said during the long exchange; whether it was a good argument poorly made or the reverse. I don’t know whether the judge’s warmth was unusual or simply how Czech courts handle minor hearings. I don’t know what the defendant made of any of it.<\/p>\n And I don’t know whether what I found valuable is methodologically defensible, or a more refined version of the tourist illusion: the sense that because you’ve been somewhere and seen something, you’ve understood it. The honest answer is probably that uncomprehending observation is a complement to linguistic comprehension, not a substitute. You see different things and some of them matter.<\/p>\n But I’d go back. For the methodology, for the richness of what you observe, for a better understanding of how the system actually works, for the conversations it generates with people who know the system from the inside. And partly because sitting in a foreign courtroom with a notebook, watching people navigate what some of them may perceive as one of the more consequential moments of their lives and others merely a routine Wednesday, turns out to be genuinely, embarrassingly good fun. And next time I might try to understand a little less, just to see what else emerges.<\/p>\n Many thanks to Jakub Drap\u00e1l for the guided tour, and for patiently answering the questions I didn’t even know I was asking while I was watching.<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,1_5,1_5,1_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Mojca.png” title_text=”Mojca” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”|-55px|||false|false” custom_padding=”|1px||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Mojca M. Plesni\u010dar<\/strong><\/p>\n author<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Bergman Blix, S., & Wettergren, \u00c5. (2019). The emotional interaction of judicial objectivity. O\u00f1ati Socio-Legal Series<\/em>, 9<\/em>(5), 726\u2013746. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.35295\/osls.iisl\/0000-0000-0000-1079<\/p>\n Dr\u00e1pal, J., Krajewski, K., & Tripkovi\u0107, M. (Eds.). (2026). Suspended prison sentences: Elusive punishment in Central and Eastern Europe<\/em>. Routledge. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9781003568667<\/p>\n Jeromelj, L. (2024). Kazenski pravniki kot emocionalni delavci. Pravna Praksa<\/em>, 43<\/em>(48), II\u2013VIII.<\/p>\n Roach Anleu, S., Bergman Blix, S., Mack, K., & Wettergren, \u00c5. (2016). Observing judicial work and emotions: Using two researchers. Qualitative Research<\/em>, 16<\/em>(4), 375\u2013391. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/1468794115579475<\/p>\n Sko\u010dir, M., & Plesni\u010dar, M. M. (2025). Jezik na zato\u017eni klopi: Natan\u010dnost, razumljivost in izzivi razlage pravnega pomena v kazenskem pravu. Sloven\u0161\u010dina 2.0: Empiri\u010dne, Aplikativne in Interdisciplinarne Raziskave<\/em>, 13<\/em>(2), 68\u2013101. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4312\/slo2.0.2025.2.68-101<\/p>\n Tata, C. (2020). Sentencing: A social process \u2014 Re-thinking research and policy<\/em>. Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In March, while on a research visit in Prague, Jakub Drap\u00e1l was kind enough to take us to court. Luckily, this was literally, not figuratively. Despite studying sentencing for a living, a lot of my understanding is acquired through the mediated lens of court files and statistics or filtered through the words and understanding of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240794"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240809,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240794\/revisions\/240809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inst-krim.si\/sentrix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Our hearing<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Observable<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Methods questions I can’t yet answer<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Takeaways<\/strong><\/h3>\n