Facebook Court is a social experiment by artist Martin Butler to see if it is possible to create a model for online legal discussion, using Facebook as a democratic social and legal tool. Through its “sharing”, “liking”, debating and commentary, Facebook allows for an ease of opinion and view points to be shared like never before on a global level.

The idea for Facebook Court is to create a mock legal trial that will be debated online from an open Facebook community from mid November. After two weeks of debate around a number of case studies, Facebook users will be able to vote on the verdict on the 4th December 2013.

Tele_Trust an installation by contributing artist Karen Lancel

Facebook Court is part of the future of the Mediating Justice conference organised by TU Delft and the European Institute for Technology. In which artists, hackers, designers and legal scholars will interrogate current trends and their implications for the future legal practice. General questions will reflect on how the courtroom mediated through social media and the internet  mediated will differ from the already growing TV coverage, along with how emerging forms of visual literacy will impact on the legal systems of the future.

Results of contributions and deliberations are to be published in a special issue of AI & Society, Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication (eds.: prof.dr. Inge van der Vlies, dr. Caroline Nevejan, dr. Satinder Gill). Several authors have submitted abstracts in advance and will discuss these.