“It's a circus”

Processes of law are not undertaken in a vacuum but are spread across space, time, and engagement with multiple senses. Spatio-sensorial and temporal factors provide a view into how the law is implemented and experienced by those it is being implemented for and its impact on their understanding of courts, the functioning of the law, and the delivery of justice. Moving away from the numeric measurement of the “performance of justice” based on factors such as level of case disposal, pendency, and so on, this chapter focuses on spatio-sensorial and temporal factors as indicators of the performance of justice. It explores the experiences of women litigants in domestic violence proceedings in lower courts in India and shows that litigants’ spatio-sensorial and temporal experience of court proceedings is shaped by the court’s agency over them, exercised through rituals governing court proceedings and through rules often not formally prescribed and known to the litigants. The court thus moulds the behaviour, autonomy, and mobility of the litigants, thus affecting their experience of court proceedings. Through a focus on the spatio-sensorial and temporal, the chapter shows that courts undermine the role of litigants, ranking them the lowest amongst stakeholders critical to their processes.