Light and Shade. The Challenges of Judicial Heritage

Marc Renneville (1, 2) , Sophie Victorien (2)

1 CAK-CRHST - Centre Alexandre Koyré - Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques
2 CLAMOR - Centre pour les humanités numériques et l’histoire de la justice

Should the heritage of justice be considered a “dark heritage”? The questions raised in this new issue of Criminocorpus journal in the context of the project’s 20th anniversary celebrations in 2023 are in line with its long-standing willingness to promote the creation of a museum of justice in France to showcase the entire judicial world and penal chain; a unifying place that could bring together all institutional memories and would be both scientifically demanding and open to the public. The first virtual groundwork was laid in 2016 as we launched the first online digital museum dedicated to the history of justice. Since then, the editorial policy of Criminocorpus has always remained in line with this perspective. In Situ. Revue des patrimoines devoted two consecutive issues to the heritage of the justice system, in an attempt to define the issues along four axes: architecture, archives, decor and furniture, and valorizing the heritage of the justice system9. As a follow-up to this double issue, we wanted to probe the judicial heritage further, exploring how it hinges on memory issues and where it fits in the process of writing and passing on the history of justice. Why would this heritage be considered “dark”? Do we mean that it is invisible or that not enough light is being shed on it to achieve knowledge and recognition? Does the epithet apply to the whole of the judicial heritage? Why, specifically? How does the judicial world get patrimonialized in practice? Which factors obstruct or foster the patrimonialization process? The Criminocorpus thematic dossier therefore offer studies exploring the following three avenues: 1/ Destroy? Preserve? Repurpose? What to Do with Justice Facilities? 2/ Memory Issues regarding the Judicial Heritage 3/ Passing Down the History of Justice. Places, Objects and Mediations Also interesting would be an exploration of the many different media used throughout the history of justice and how they are being preserved, since in addition to these places, used for many different purposes (tourism, learning, business…), the telling of history is increasingly based on images of the justice system and litigants, postcards, press cartoons, scholarly studies, documentary and fiction films. Surely these media and vectors of history have a heritage value of their own. In line with our journal’s editorial policy, the topic of this thematic dossier is open to any new article submission furthering our knowledge of judicial heritage.

Keywords: Judicial heritage; history of justice

Domains: History

Marc Renneville, Sophie Victorien. Light and Shade. The Challenges of Judicial Heritage. Criminocorpus, revue hypermédia, 2024, ⟨10.4000/criminocorpus.14855⟩. ⟨hal-04541658⟩