Event overview
"Doing Justice to Pictures" Talk by Judge Ruth Herz, Visiting Professor and Judge in the School of Law, Birkbeck as part of the Visual Cultures Public Programme.
Throughout his career from 1930 to 1970 the French Judge Cavellat sketched the courtroom scenes unfolding before him. I, a judge myself, explore these images which I believe not only show the judge’s thoughts strongly shaped by his education and training. The intimate impressions also reveal the troubled relationship between the judge’s legal education and habitus and the personal feelings and fantasies while going about his profession. The latter I argue lay bare his personality, background, class and gender.
Ruth Herz has an exemplary career that spans the judiciary, Youth Justice, policy and practical initiatives focusing on alternative dispute resolution and law and popular culture. From 1974 to 2006 she was a judge of the District Court of Cologne working in the Youth Court. Coming from a family of jurists, who were persecuted during the Nazi period, she has been the first and only Jewish member of the bench in Germany since the Second World War. During her period in office she represented the German judiciary in various national and international policy making forums. She has published major studies of the German Juvenile Justice system.
In 1985 she founded the "Die Waage" (Scales), a victim-offender-mediation program for young offenders. This program was adopted as the model for the introduction of mediation into penal legislation in Germany. Her pioneering work in this area of criminal justice was formally recognised in 1998 when Dr Herz was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande).
Taking leave from her judicial position she spent 4 years playing the role of the judge in one of Germany’s most popular reality TV shows, ‘Das Jugendgericht’ (‘The Youth Court’) with a daily audience of over 2 million viewers across Europe. The programme, made by ‘Filmpool’, a successful German production company, was broadcast by RTL, Europe’s biggest terrestrial commercial television channel. It was shown across German speaking Europe five days a week. She used the medium to convey her societal and legal messages through the 1000 judgments handed down. Since then she has published scholarly articles about her experiences as a TV judge, including a paper with Professor Moran in the Law School.
Concurrently, Dr Herz pursued an academic career and has published extensively. Her published work in scholarly journals and monographs spans a wide range of interests from criminal justice policy, comparative studies of punishment, work on law and television, and gender, to her current research on justice and images which is soon to be published by Hart, an Oxford based academic press. She has been visiting fellow at Princeton in Law and Public Affairs, Princeton USA (2010) and was Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford from 2007-2010. She has further been a visiting lecturer in several Universities in Europe, the Middle East and North America.
Since 1993 Dr Herz has been representing Germany, in regular meetings of an international moot court at the International court of Justice at the Hague, where she forged close relations with the British representatives, Lord Chief Justice, Igor Judge and in the UK Supreme Court, Justice John Dyson.
Whilst a Visiting Professor in the School of Law, Birkbeck, Dr Herz will engage in a range of activities to include lectures, participation in the Judicial Conversations series of events, research seminars; meet with and advise postgraduate students involved in the Masters in Criminal Law Criminal Justice; and participate in seminars on Youth Justice. She will also be working with colleagues who have an interest in law and visual culture. Her appointment builds on links that have already been established: in 2009 Dr Herz participated in a workshop on law and visual culture at Birkbeck and is due to publish this research in her new book, The Art of Justice: the Judge’s Perspective. She has also worked with Professor Moran and published with him.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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15 Nov 2012 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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