Observing courtrooms in contexts of exceptionality

Chile has gone through two consecutive periods of exceptionality between late 2019 and mid-2021. By exceptionality, we refer to the suspension of fundamental rights such as freedom of movement, access to education and justice. The protests known as the "Chilean October" of 2019, characterised by many human rights violations performed by police forces during more than two months, preceded the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to highly restrictive measures in Chile. To be more specific, on October 18, 2019, a constitutional state of emergency ( estado de excepción constitucional de emergencia ) was declared for a fortnight, a mechanism that has never been used in the country in democratic times and which involves a curfew and control of civil security by the military. In March 2020 was decreed a constitutional state of disaster ( estado de excepción constitucional de catástrofe ) that lasted 18 months, included a curfew and led to the massive closure of public institutions, including schools and courts of justice, which began operating solely remotely. Both periods of exceptionality had a direct impact on our ethnographic work given they affected the conditions of observation of justice in the making in courts, as well as the possibility to interact closely with our interviewees outside the courtrooms. In this chapter we show how exceptionality disrupted our data collection, and how we negotiated exceptionality by adapting our data collection strategies.