A new Banksy mural appeared overnight on the exterior wall of London’s Royal Courts of Justice, only to be covered, guarded, and swiftly scrubbed away within days, reigniting debate about protest, power and the place of dissent in public space.
On the morning of 8 September 2025, passers-by spotted a large stencilled image on the Queen’s Building façade in Carey Street: a judge in full wig and robe, gavel raised, looming over a fallen protester clutching a blood-splattered placard. Banksy confirmed the work as his own by posting it to his Instagram with the simple caption: “Royal Courts Of Justice. London.”
The mural’s composition, stark black and white punctuated only by the red on the protester’s sign, resonated instantly with Londoners. Many saw it as a powerful commentary on the criminalisation of dissent after nearly 900 protesters were arrested in recent demonstrations linked to the UK government’s ban on the activist group Palestine Action.
Yet its location transformed interpretation into confrontation. The Royal Courts of Justice, home to the High Court and Court of Appeal, is one of the city’s most secure and heavily policed sites. Within hours of the mural’s discovery, court officials and security guards covered the work with black sheeting and metal barriers, citing the Grade II listed status of the building and a legal obligation to preserve its historic character. By 10 September, crews were scrubbing the image off the stone entirely, although a ghostly figure remains.
The semi-removal immediately became part of the story. On social media, campaigners framed the erasure itself as a kind of performed censorship, erasing Banksy’s mural just like it’s erasing the right of people to protest.
In the shadow of that erasure, the mural raises its own questions about visibility and power.
Placed directly on a seat of legal authority, it mirrored, perhaps too literally, how justice can be interpreted, enforced or withheld.
And the swiftness with which it was hidden and removed only amplified its message: that critiques of institutional power, once made visible, are often the first to be silenced.
Like many of Banksy’s interventions, this work refused to remain on the wall long enough for easy containment. Its ghostly disappearance, and the debates surrounding it extends the mural’s reach beyond stone and paint into the public psyche: a conversation about who gets to speak, who gets heard, and who decides what remains visible in a democratic society.