The settings for legal proceedings in Massachusetts changed dramatically in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Whereas seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century justices held court in a wide variety of public spaces, particularly meetinghouses and taverns, by the early nineteenth century court sessions had moved into monumental, purpose-built courthouses designated exclusively for the conduct of judicial proceedings. These transformations in the physical settings of law correspond closely with the emergence of law and architecture as organized professions. The Massachusetts legal community grew from a fragmented, heterogeneous, and often acrimonious group of practitioners into a powerful and united bench and bar just as some members of the building trades began to identify aspects of their craft as specialized knowledge and to call themselves "architects." In each case, new professions defined themselves as an exclusive group through claims of status founded on an ethic of expertise and a code of conduct that required an impartial, dispassionate stance toward their work and clients. This project of professionalization undertaken by lawyers and architects provided an entirely new conceptual framework for civic design.

Built in conjunction with prisons, function-specific courthouses defined a judicial landscape that was removed from the traditional site for civic structures at the market centers of Massachusetts county seats. New buildings in new locations helped to legitimize lawyers' claims of professionalism by highlighting their activities in the courtrooms and by defining law as separate from, and untainted by, market transactions. In addition, these important building projects gave architects the opportunity to reshape the civic landscape of Massachusetts county seats. The result was new spaces for judicial proceedings that physically articulated the professional ideal.