| The Edmund Edelman Children's Court in Los Angeles County, California is considered an example of the ideal juvenile dependency courthouse, with bright murals, open play spaces, and modified courtrooms that reflect the capacity of juvenile court environments to be "child-sensitive" and "family-friendly." Based on fieldwork and archival research on the court, I identify and interrogate the cultural assumptions about children that make it possible for a court that has the power to terminate parental rights to appear child-friendly. Drawing on my research and relevant theoretical literature, my goal is to reveal the ways in which the law, the "child," and courthouse architecture---three categories less stable than the assumptions about them might indicate---intersect in this site with serious repercussions for the understanding and perceptions about dependency law. In particular, I argue that the innocent child is a crucial category that ensures the legibility and function of punishment of other subjects, for example against the parent of a maltreated minor. |
