Come in and See: Translating a Design Pattern from the Courtroom into an Online Environment

Abstract

AbstractPublicity is one of the core principles in procedural law and a fundamental right related to due process. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chilean courts held judicial proceedings online and streamed them to comply with the publicity principle. One case especially sparked the interest of the public: a man was accused of seven sexually connotated crimes, trialled online and the hearings live streamed on social media. In this article, we approach the publicity of a court proceeding as a design pattern. We apply conceptual analysis to procedural law, social media studies and organization studies to (1) investigate the different materializations of the “come in and see” pattern; (2) analyse the factors that affect the translation of a design pattern from one domain (legal) to another (digital). Our focus is on a design pattern in the law, called “come in and see”, used whenever procedures and actions require legitimization by people. We argue that publicity in a courtroom is enacted by allowing people to step into a courtroom while allowing people inside an online trial has unintended and unwanted consequences. The case analysis shows how the “come in and see” is a context-dependent pattern whose effect is determined by the surrounding architecture and institution.