Les normes assiégées

This essay investigates the contemporary transformations of judicial legitimacy through a semiotic reading of courthouse architecture, focusing in particular on the Palace of Justice in Milan. Using the example of the Ruby trial and the symbolic “siege” staged in 2013 by members of parliament loyal to Silvio Berlusconi, the text examines how the traditionally sacralized space of the law is increasingly subjected to populist media logic and digital desymbolization. By analyzing judicial proxemics as a site of conflict between institutional transcendence and spectacular populism, the essay explores how the authority of law is undermined when the collective imagination is overtaken by a scripted, mediatized, and even fictional conception of justice. The Italian case is presented as a global paradigm, foreshadowing similar developments in the United States, Brazil, and beyond, and raising a crucial question: can the law survive without the symbolic forms that give it substance?