The scene of justice for now 150 years — where Island chicanery, plunder and families torn asunder are presented equally before law — the Edgartown courthouse commands a certain grandeur.

So when Dukes County superior court begins its 150th year there, Sheriff Michael McCormack, like the 21 county sheriffs before him, will open the session wearing a tuxedo with tails.

When Mrs. Edward M. Kennedy walked into the courtroom almost 40 years ago, she was clad in a black and white coat and followed by her husband. When he said “guilty,” in a voice almost inaudible, to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident on the Dike Bridge, the red brick building on Main street, Edgartown, was etched into the national imagination, the whole of Martha’s Vineyard along with it.

Wearing his signature bow tie, superior court clerk Joseph E. (Joe) Sollitto Jr. still remembers where he sat in the courthouse as a young Oak Bluffs police officer during the Kennedy court case in 1969, as a legion of cameramen waited outside for their sprint to Telex machines temporarily set up in a nearby church. Mr. Sollitto became superior court clerk seven years later, in 1976. Now, considering his workplace of so many years, Mr. Sollitto says, “Sometimes it brings out the best in us when we do justice and also try and help people.”

The varnished wooden furniture in the courtroom predates the memories of the living. The leather cushions on its seats are stuffed with horse hair. No one can remember when the roof didn’t leak.

It once was a big building, but now in almost every way it feels small, a tight fit in a county that has boomed in just about every way.

From July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, $488 million worth of property changed hands on Martha’s Vineyard; the registry of deeds office in the courthouse recorded each parcel.

The building’s vaults, with rows of banged-up cabinets, hold records going back to the 1600s, when Native American residents spoke and were recorded in their own language. Many of the words and sentences are recorded on brown, brittle paper in leather-bound ledgers in the registry of deeds and in superior court.

It takes only a few minutes, a couple of page turns, for Dianne E. Powers, register of deeds, to go back centuries. She can fill her thoughts with another time by looking at the ink scratchings of white settlers who had negotiated for land from the native residents and put their agreement onto paper. Forget the trophy houses of today going for millions of dollars. The courthouse records go back to a priceless time when property bounds were defined by tree stumps, boulders and a water well.

The records have been the subject of scholarly research, yet the place doesn’t pretend or try to be a museum. The mission of the court is to be a keeper of the record for the benefit of those involved in land transaction, legal work, the work of today and into the future. But with a mantra like that, the courthouse also becomes the headquarters for understanding how the Island got to be where it is today.

Generations of Island families have been broken, mended and remade here. Elizabeth J. Herrmann, register of probate and family court, can trace family legacies by tears that have fallen onto the old linoleum floor beneath her feet. Smiles, too, have arisen in the hallway outside her office. In every legal decision, there are winners and losers; ask a couple going through a divorce. The courthouse is often the starting place where people move on with their lives, whether there is agreement or not.

The most positive side of the tough work done in her small office, Ms. Herrmann said this week, is child adoptions.

The district court judge sits year-round Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and every moment is full. Arraignments can happen any day. District court handles about 1,400 cases a year, 800 small claims cases, 200 civil cases. About 120 restraining orders are issued each year. All that work comes under the eye of clerk magistrate Liza Williamson and her small staff of four people.

“District court deals with a lot more cases than we do,” Mr. Sollitto said. “District court may have a trial that lasts one day, while our cases can range from a week to three weeks long,” he said.

Drama has always filled the rooms, where each year hundreds may have the worst day of their lives. Bad decisions, bad behavior made outside, get people escorted inside wearing handcuffs. The guilty don’t always look guilty and the innocent aren’t always innocent. People go to prison, many leaving the Island never to return.

There are stories of prisoners who try to escape. A man charged with burglary sneaked out of a second floor bathroom, fell to the ground and hid in St. Andrew’s Church under the altar. That was on Dec. 4, 1992. There was another incident when a man leapt from the courthouse window and broke his leg. So far, no one has escaped for long.

There was murder case in 1940. A Vineyard Gazette court reporter wrote on May 3, 1946: “No one-day session of superior court in recent history at least has packed in so much excitement as that of Tuesday. For on that day, with Judge Walter Leo Collins presiding, Harold T. Tracy walked out of the courtroom a free man, when, with the court’s consent, district attorney Frank E. Smith nol-prossed the three complaints charging murder, rape and robbery in the brutal murder of Mrs. Clara M. Smith in the summer of 1940, in a Rice School dormitory.”

Last week the courthouse was a scene of chaos, with four ambulances parked at one time around the building, following the collapse of two of six people charged with trafficking heroin, and their father watching the arraignment.

Watching over it all, from their framed places in photographs and illustrations on the wall, are judges, clerks of court and sheriffs. There are more than 30 of them throughout the building. Their photographs affirm just how little there has been changed; the courtroom was in a movie, because it looks so authentically old. The only item new in the courtroom is the rug which arrived a year ago, a gift from the Harbor View Hotel.

In the winter, the air is stuffy. The radiators can get so warm, it is hard for even the most caffeinated observer to stay awake. In summer, law books are often used to keep the windows open. A fresh breeze from the ocean can sweeten the dark halls but with the windows open, the sound of traffic and tour buses passing nearby makes it hard to hear. A damp rainy summer day outside, means a damp day inside.

A small second floor law library is where a lot of the big business of the Island gets done. It is the equivalent of an attorney’s inner sanctum. The courthouse is the only place where police officers and attorneys from every town meet, and they meet often. They have since the beginning.

The courthouse was built in 1858 to address the need for a central place for administering justice — but it was controversial from the start. At the time, the two other Island towns, Tisbury and Chilmark, were also candidates (Oak Bluffs and West Tisbury were not towns yet). Nothing regional was ever easy on the Vineyard; a dispute arose between the towns over where the county courthouse should be. There was tension among the county commissioners.

“The county commissioners, three in number, were divided, a majority favoring removal to Tisbury and the movement gaining in favor with the continued discussion,” according to Charles W. Bank’s The History of Martha’s Vineyard. There was a taxpayer’s petition to move it to Tisbury at a time when new plans were being drawn up for the building in Edgartown. Mr. Banks wrote of the petitioners: “They were too late in their campaign . . .”

The building was a huge block of brick in a town that was made up of mostly wood-framed houses. It was designed by Joseph T. James, Esq. of Holmes Hole. The building was to be 46 by 41 feet and two stories high. It was completed Sept. 30, 1858.

“It took them awhile to do it,” Ms. Powers said, presenting the 1734 paperwork for the transfer of a piece of land from an Edgartown man named Sam Bassett. It reads: “For a place to build a courthouse and a court yard for said county, forever for their own purposes.”

Changes came. A wood building was added to the side which faces the Old Whaling Church for a two-cell jail. It is the same location where the registry is located today. The current jail, farther up Main street, wasn’t built until 1873.

Early on, Ms. Powers’s office was a woodshed.

Mr. Sollitto recalls years ago discovering with the janitor a well. The water well was used for the jail. “The cap looked like a piece of marble,” he recalled. The well resides underground just behind the veterans monuments. Mr. Sollitto verified his find by looking at a 100-year-old photograph that shows the well.

There are as yet no plans for a 150th courthouse celebration. But Mr. Sollitto is planning something for next year, the 150th anniversary of superior court which has sat continuously, without interruption, in the courthouse. “Plans are under way to make that a celebration,” he said.

It will include all fitting grandeur, and maybe even a little drama.