Renowned architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who designed the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, pictured below, once wrote "Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit." Within the courthouses and other legal buildings are comparable battlegrounds.  The design of the courthouse often denotes the nobility of spirit that law seeks to uphold. Nikolaus Pevsner, in his A History of Building Types notes that, unlike the development of town halls that illustrated more stylistic than functional development, the architecture of courthouses did not differentiate as much between style and function.  He cites the beginning of "separate monumental buildings" for courthouses in England in York in 1705 with the conversion of a Debtor's Prison, and in France, towards the end of the eighteenth century.  The images in this section highlight various styles across the United States as well as around the world.

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