Courtrooms operate as unique microcosms—inhabited by courtroom personnel, legal actors, defendants, witnesses, family members, and community residents who necessarily interact with each other to conduct the day-to-day functions of justice. This Article argues that these interactions create a nuanced and salient courtroom culture that separates courtroom insiders from courtroom outsiders. The authors use the Cook County courts, specifically the George N. Leighton Courthouse at 2650 N California Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, to investigate courtroom culture and construct a thematic portrait of one of the largest criminal court systems in the United States. Using this newly constructed data source of rich ethnographic observations, this Article draws out a series of themes that illuminate two types of failures that characterize courtroom culture in Cook County: micro-level failures and structural-level failures. While micro-level failures may fall into the category of “mistakes,” when aggregated they impede the effective functioning of the criminal legal system. Structural-level failures, by contrast, threaten the fair and efficient operation of courts even in the absence of individual errors. This Article uses examples of real court interactions gathered through observational research to illustrate both categories of failures in the Cook County criminal courts. This Article then situates these observations in the context of legal cynicism theory to explain the impact of courtroom culture on those most directly impacted by the system. This Article concludes with recommendations for courtroom culture reform, looking for positive examples in our data and considering new possibilities for courts in the era of COVID-19.

法庭作为一个独特的缩影运行——法庭人员、法律行为者、被告、证人、家庭成员和社区居民必须相互交流以履行日常司法职能。本文认为，这些互动创造了一种微妙而突出的法庭文化，将法庭内部人员与法庭外部人员区分开来。作者使用库克县法院，特别是位于伊利诺伊州芝加哥市北加利福尼亚大道 2650 号的乔治·N·莱顿法院，调查法庭文化并构建美国最大的刑事法院系统之一的主题画像。使用这个新构建的丰富的民族志观察数据源，本文提出了一系列主题，这些主题阐明了库克县法庭文化中两种类型的失败：微观层面的失败和结构层面的失败。虽然微观层面的失败可能属于“错误”的范畴，但当它们聚合起来时，它们会阻碍刑事法律制度的有效运作。相比之下，即使在没有个人错误的情况下，结构层面的失误也会威胁到法院的公平和有效运作。本文使用通过观察研究收集的真实法庭互动示例来说明库克县刑事法庭的两类失败。然后，本文将这些观察置于法律犬儒主义理论的背景下，以解释法庭文化对受制度影响最直接的人的影响。