We set off with criminal trial hearings in various countries. Sociologists and criminologists consider trials as crucial elements of justice systems. At stake is the public legitimisation of punishment, the restoration of the moral economy, and the monopolisation of state power. Legitimisation through procedure, it is said, requires grounded, unbiased and efficient trials. But where do the cases come from in the first place? What is decided about must have been put together somewhere and somehow. Cases are practical accomplishments.

How, we ask accordingly, are these accomplishments achieved and integrated in spatiotemporal expanded work-processes? For instance, how are criminal defences set in motion? How are legal statements put together? How are they rendered available for all practical purposes? And how does the production of cases vary in procedural systems? We are, to put short, after the practical grounds and the systematic effects of criminal proceedings: the trans-sequential activities - within events and in between events - by which legal facts and legal positions are brought into existance.

But is this at all relevant for legal scholars and practitioners? Does this matter at all? We expect the results to teach a good deal on the socio-material constitution of legal work, on the spatiotemporal divisions of labour, and on the variety of contingent solutions for analogous problems. Our comparative ethnography puts an emphasis on the timing and the temporalities of legal discourse: the pasts and futures of current dealings.