“Silence in the court!” is a stock courtroom imperative meant to secure decorum so testimony can be heard and judged. In Wonderland, the line functions as a ritual formula without the rational outcome it promises. The White Rabbit, trumpet and scroll in hand, occupies the procedural role—herald, clerk, usher—whose job is to make a spectacle seem official. His cry briefly asserts authority over Alice’s spontaneous critique, but the scene shows how hollow that authority is. The King cannot locate the culprit even with spectacles; the jurors, who should be silent listeners, busily copy the disturbance instead of information, writing “stupid things!” on their slates and even asking how to spell “stupid.” The command thus generates more noise in the form of pointless record-keeping. Carroll parodies the performative power of legal language: the words are supposed to enact order, yet they enforce only the appearance of procedure. Alice’s growing body and growing skepticism soon outstrip such formulae; by the next chapter she will refuse “sentence first—verdict afterwards,” exposing that this court values the ceremony of control over the substance of justice.