ICYMI: Branco on Exploring Justitia Through Eowyn and Niobe @LivUni_Law

ICYMI: Patricia Branco, Exploring Justitia Through Éowyn and Niobe: On Gender, Race and the Legal, 38 Liverpool Law Review 63 (2017). Here is the abstract.

The image of Lady Justice, a white woman, sometimes appearing with her eyes veiled and other times unveiled, at times bearing scales and/or a sword in her hands, still is a common and popular feature of legal culture in many parts of the world. This is an image of justice that is found everywhere, from courthouses to cartoons. However, one may ask: “Who is this woman?”; Is she really a worthy representative of justice?; Or even a commendable representative of women? Thus, in this article, it is proposed to question the image of Lady Justice and the interpretations that have been associated with it, as well as the standards of conduct required of, and imposed upon, women both inside and outside the legal profession. The article will consider a range of arguments related to such questions, particularly on the issues of gender and race, by using two female characters: Éowyn (from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings) and Niobe (from the Wachowskis’s The Matrix). The two characters are women who have some significance in both plots. Through them, I will establish some similarities and differences with Justitia, namely the need to be disguised as men or embrace male attitudes (a similar process concerning women in the legal profession, for example); the use of weapons (specifically, the sword, and, hence, the necessary analysis of women as law breakers, in contradiction to the image of Justitia); and finally some key issues relating to the representation of women of colour.

Download the article at the link.

ICYMI: Etienne Madranges, Les Palais de Justice (2011) @LexisNexisFr @etimad

ICYMI:

Etienne Madranges, Les palais de justice de France (Lexis/Nexis, 2011).

Ce livre est la mémoire du patrimoine judiciaire français dans sa diversité, avec ses aspects parfois émouvants, parfois somptueux, et des anecdotes étonnantes. Des centaines de palais, du plus simple au plus solennel. L'auteur a voulu montrer au grand public la richesse, les curiosités, les endroits et objets insolites des temples de la Justice de France. Il en a visité plus de 1 000 et a pu, avant la fermeture récente de 200 tribunaux, fixer par l'image tous ces lieux chargés d'histoire(s). Fidèle à son habitude, il a réalisé seul cet ouvrage : totalité des photos et des textes, recherches documentaires, mise en pages, maquette.

C'est en effet son regard qu'il veut faire partager au lecteur. 

Vous allez admirer des meubles magnifiques, des sièges rares, des pendules faites sur mesure, des plafonds colorés et des fresques, vous arrêter aux 500 barres des témoins, mais aussi apprécier l'évolution de l'architecture judiciaire, vous rendre au tribunal de la mine, de la pêche, du sel, au tribunal peint par Cocteau, au bailliage, à la cour des appeaux, à la viguerie, à la maison des plaids, visiter les parlements richement décorés, les temples à colonnes et les palais contemporains transparents.

Vous vous étonnerez devant le nombre des allégories de la Justice, des symboles religieux, maçonniques, républicains, royaux, impériaux... et vous pourrez contempler la chasuble d'un Saint, un cheval à la place du juge, un miroir transpercé par des balles, des graffitis anciens poignants, des piloris et des fourches patibulaires, le sac de l'affaire pendante, le carreau sur lequel on reste, et même des colonnes dans une forêt ou apprendre qu'un magistrat est enterré dans une réplique de tribunal.

Un immense travail de recherche et plus de 700 sites à découvrir en 5 400 photos.
Né en 1951, Étienne Madranges est magistrat, universitaire et historien. De formation scientifique et juridique, diplômé de l'Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, il a présidé des organismes internationaux ainsi que l'Institut National de la Jeunesse, appartenu à plusieurs cabinets ministériels, administré des associations nationales et des fondations, enseigné dans diverses universités et grandes écoles et a été organiste. 

Concepteur de divers dispositifs en faveur des jeunes et des handicapés, rédacteur d'un traité international et de textes législatifs et réglementaires, il a également été directeur d'administration centrale, comme directeur national de la jeunesse, de l'éducation populaire et de la vie associative au ministère de la Jeunesse et des Sports. Avocat général à la cour d'appel de Paris, il a été, auprès du Garde des Sceaux, responsable de la mission patrimoine du ministère de la Justice. 

Adepte de la lumière et de la couleur, il parcourt régulièrement le monde à la recherche de belles images. Il a pris plus de 500 000 clichés dans les édifices civils et religieux d'une soixantaine de pays, visitant notamment les palais de justice et prisons les plus divers sur les cinq continents.

Son livre "Regards sur le Palais dans la Cité" demeure l'ouvrage de référence sur le Palais de Justice de Paris, ses secrets et ses allégories. Par ailleurs spécialiste de l'art sacré, il a consacré un livre de photos au thème millénaire de l'Arbre de Jessé. Il a en projet d'autres ouvrages sur l'art.

Marrani on Space, Time, Justice: A New Book From Routledge Publishing @routledgebooks @Doubledegree

David Marrani, Dean, Institute of Law, Jersey, has published Space, Time, Justice: From Archaic Rituals to Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

This book merges philosophical, psychoanalytical and legal perspectives to explore how spaces of justice are changing and the effect this has on the development of the　administration of justice. There are as central themes: the idea of transgression as the starting point of the question of justice and its archaic anchor; the relation between spaces of justice and ritual(s); the question of use and abuse of transparency in contemporary courts; and the abolition of the judicial walls with the use of cameras in courts. It offers a comparative approach, looking at spaces of justice in both the civil and common law traditions. Presenting a theoretical and interdisciplinary study of spaces of justice, it will appeal to academics in the fields of law, criminology, sociology and architecture.

 

Somos on A New Architecture of Justice: Dan Kiley's Design for the Nuremberg Trials' Courtroom @msomos

Mark Somos, Harvard University Safra Center for Ethics; Harvard Law School, has published A New Architecture of Justice: Dan Kiley's Design for the Nuremberg Trials’ Courtroom as Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2018-04.
Here is the abstract.

Courtroom 600 in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice is one of the most iconic sites in the history of international criminal law. Yet the extensive literature on Courtroom 600 neglects the original 1945 drawings of the architect Dan Kiley, now in the archives of the Harvard Design School. This article revises our understanding of Courtroom 600 in light of these drawings. Among other findings it argues that Kiley, rather than Jackson or the OSS, was the main source of design decisions; that the secondary literature overemphasises film at the expense of architecture; and that the design of both Courtroom 600 and the entire reconstructed Palace of Justice offer valuable insights into this key moment in the history of international law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Series on Law and the Arts at the University of Malaga Faculty of Law @jcalvo11

Beginning March 9, the University of Malaga School of Law is hosting a series of seminars on Art and Law. The March 9th lecture features Professors Jose Calvo Gonzalez and Maria Pina Fersini discussing law and architecture. On April 12, Professor Felipe Navarro Martinez will discuss law and literature, Professor Jose Manuel Cabra Apalategui will discuss law and music, and Professor Cristina Monereo Atienza will discuss law and photography. On May 3, Professor Jose Francisco Alenza Garcia will discuss law in Game of Thrones.

More here.

Khorakiwala on Legal Consciousness as Viewed Through the Judicial Iconography of the Madras High Court

Rahela Khorakiwala, Jawaharlal Nehru University, has published Legal Consciousness as Viewed through the Judicial Iconography of the Madras High Court at 5 Asian Journal of Law and Society 1 (2018).

The Madras High Court located in Chennai, India, was established in 1862 when India was under colonial rule. It continues to exist in post-independence India after merging into the Indian legal system. In this study, I argue that the architecture and judicial iconography of the Madras High Court building reflects a recurring historical tension between Indian and British concepts of justice. This is continually reflected in the semiotics of the legal space of this high court which in turn influences the legal consciousness of the court personnel who utilize this space. This architecture and iconography of the Madras High Court constitutes, preserves, and reinforces the ambivalent legal consciousness of those who created, occupy, and visit this space. The contemporary legal consciousness of the court personnel is thus seen to have deep historical roots.

Via Legal History Blog.

Marrani on Space, Time, Law: From Archaic Rituals to Contemporary Perspectives @Doubledegree @routledgepublishing @InstofLawJersey

David Marrani, Director, Institute of Law, Jersey, has published Space, Time, Law: From Archaic Rituals to Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2017). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

This book merges philosophical, psychoanalytical and legal perspectives to explore how spaces of justice are changing and the effect this has on the development of the　administration of justice. There are as central themes: the idea of transgression as the starting point　of the question of justice and its archaic anchor; the relation between spaces of justice and ritual(s); the question of use and abuse of transparency in contemporary courts; and the abolition of the judicial walls with the use of cameras in courts. It offers a comparative approach, looking at spaces of justice in both the civil and common law traditions. Presenting a theoretical and interdisciplinary study of spaces of justice, it will appeal to academics in the fields of law, criminology, sociology and architecture.

 

Rossner, Tait, McKimmie, and Sarre on Courtroom Design and the Presumption of Innocence @meredithrossner @blakemckimmie @UniversitySA

Meredith Rossner, London School of Economics & Political Science, David Tait, University of Western Sydney College of Arts, Blake McKimmie, University of Queensland, and Rick T. Sarre, University of South Australia School of Law, have published The Dock on Trial: Courtroom Design and the Presumption of Innocence at 44 Journal of Law and Society 317 (2017). Here is the abstract.

This article examines the place of the criminal dock in courtroom design. Challenges to the use of the dock have been based upon the inability of the defendants to hear effectively, to communicate with counsel, to maintain their dignity, and to benefit from the presumption of innocence. Increasingly courts are incorporating secure docks, where defendants are partially or completely surrounded by glass (or in some countries, metal bars). To what extent do these changes and modifications undermine the right to the presumption of innocence? We present the results of an experimental mock jury study that was designed to test whether the placement of the accused influences jurors’ perceptions. We find that jurors are more likely to convict defendants when they are located in a traditional dock or a secure dock, compared to sitting next to their counsel at the bar table. We conclude by discussing the implications for trial procedures, counsel communications, and courtroom design.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

A New Book on Law's "Spatial Turn": Spaces of Justice, Edited by Chris Butler and Edward Mussawir

Chris Butler and Edward Mussawir, both of the Griffith Law School, are editing Spaces of Justice: Peripheries, Passages, Appropriations (Routledge, 2017). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

This collection is inspired by the transdisciplinary possibilities posed by the connections between space and justice. Drawing on a variety of theoretical influences that include Henri Lefebvre, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Doreen Massey, Gillian Rose, Walter Benjamin, Elias Canetti, Antonio Negri and Yan Thomas, the contributors to this book conduct a series of jurisprudential, aesthetic and political inquiries into ‘just’ modes of occupying space, and the ways in which space comes under the signs of law and justice. Bringing together leading critical legal scholars with theorists and practitioners from other disciplines within the humanities, Spaces of Justice investigates unexplored associations between law and architectural theory, the visual arts, geography and cultural studies. The book contributes to the ongoing destabilisation of the boundaries between law and the broader humanities and will be of considerable interest to scholars and students with an interest in the normative dimensions of law’s ‘spatial turn’.

Branco on Courthouses as Spaces of Recognition, Functionality, and Access to Law and Justice: A Portuguese Reflection

Patricia Branco, Universidade de Coimbra, Centre for Social Studies (CES), is publishing Courthouses as Spaces of Recognition, Functionality and Access to Law and Justice: A Portuguese Reflection in volume 6 of Oñati Socio-Legal Series (2016). Here is the abstract.

One of the most overlooked topics at the level of reflection regarding law and the legal system, has been the courthouse architecture. Architecture organizes and structures space, making it intelligible, understandable, and capable of being interpreted as possible, being that the exterior and interior, as well as materials and objects present therein can facilitate or inhibit our activities through how they mean and represent certain messages. Hence it becomes necessary to make an analysis of the spaces of justice - and here I have in mind the Courthouse as a privileged public space of justice – taking into consideration the circumstances of time, place of jurisdiction, the historical, political, regulatory, and socio-cultural contexts, as well as legal tradition. Thus, and by analyzing the trends (international and national) of development of construction and / or adaptation (types of buildings and internal organization, focusing on different infrastructures and accessibility) and respective use, including, here, the representations and spatial practices of the real actors (professionals and users), I propose to consider the importance of regarding courthouses as spaces of justice, through the lenses given by the functions of recognition, functionality and access to law and justice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: The Art of Law, Bruges, January 16-18, 2017

Call for Papers: The Art of Law, Bruges, January 16-18, 2017 

Deadline for Submission, June 1, 2016

The Art of Law: Artistic Representations and Iconography of Law & Justice in Context from the Middle Ages to the First World War

In his Rechtsboek van Den Briel written in 1405 for the Dutch town of Den Briel, Jan Matthijsen, a court clerk, specified what a proper court or deliberation room should look like. “...[T]he courtroom will be made clean inside and filled with paintings and inscribed with good old wise words, from which one can acquire wisdom and cleverness, as one says: to behold is to be aware”. The phrase convincingly illustrates the link, in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries, between law and the visual arts in general, and the use of court room decorations in particular. From town hall decorations depicting the Last Judgement and so-called exempla iustitiae, via the allegory of justice in the figure of a woman and her depiction on frontispieces of books, to the nineteenth-century Palaces of Justice, time and again it becomes clear how the practitioners of law used art and the visual in order to function and reach their ideal: justice.

 From 28 October, 2016 through 5 February, 2017, the Groeningemuseum in Bruges will host the exhibition The Art of Law. Three Centuries of Justice depicted. This art exhibition will feature about 100 artworks from over 30 national and international museums and libraries and will focus on themes related to justice as expressed in artworks of various media from about 1500 through 1800. In 2018, from 23 March until 24 June, the Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen, in collaboration with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, will organize the exhibition Call for Justice. Art and Law in the Burgundian Low Countries. This exhibition will focus on the ways in which artworks from the ‘long’ Burgundian period (1450-1650) have negotiated the concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’. Both exhibitions will be accompanied by respective academic conferences.

The first conference will be organized on 16, 17 and 18 January, 2017 in Bruges and is entitled The Art of Law. Artistic Representations and Iconography of Law & Justice in Context from the Middle Ages to the First World War. Recent years have witnessed a clear rise in scholarship on law and the visual, mostly originating in the wider field of law and the humanities. The Bruges conference wishes to contribute to this scholarship by focusing on imagery in its legal and art historical contexts. The organizers seek to bring together original and interdisciplinary scholarship that questions the role of art in the practice of law, jurisprudence and justice administration from the Late Middle Ages through the nineteenth century. The exhibitions and the Bruges conference coincide with the fifth and final year of the Belspo Interuniversity Attraction Pole Justice and Populations: The Belgian experience in international perspective 1795-2015 (2012-2017) and its work package (WP4) Long-term self-representations of Justice.

A substantial part of the Bruges conference will be devoted to the 19th and 20th centuries, in order to present the research results of the mentioned WP4 to a critical public of peers. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the IAP subseries of Springer’s Studies in the History of Law and Justice.

 Paper proposals in English may deal with – but are not limited to: - the theological origins of legal imagery and iconography; - the use of art in the practice of law and jurisprudence; - the impact of technological and genre evolutions such as the printing device, frontispieces and/or emblemata on legal iconography; - the presence and function of legal iconography in urban public space; - spectatorship, art and law; - imagery as a visual source for legal history.

The second conference, to be held in Mechelen in June 2018, will focus on places where justice was administered as centers of artistic production. Although equally fascinating as research topics, papers on the history of copyright and art law fall beyond the thematic reach of the conference.

Paper proposals of 20 minutes should be sent as 300 word abstracts including one or two images, together with a short academic CV and publication list, to Stefan.Huygebaert@ugent.be and Vanessa.Paumen@brugge.be by 1 June, 2016 at 17:00.

The organizers invite junior and senior scholars from all disciplines involved (art history, legal history, political and/or institutional history, archeology, architectural history and other fields from the humanities) as well as museum professionals. The authors of the selected papers will be notified by 15 July, 2016.

A selection of papers will be peer reviewed and published in the form of an academic book. The conference will take place in the Groeningemuseum (Bruges, Belgium) on 16, 17 and 18 January, 2017. A private visit to the exhibition The Art of Law will be part of the program.

Keynote speaker : Carolin Behrmann (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Plank-Institut) Organized by the Flemish research centre for the arts in the Burgundian Netherlands and Musea Brugge, the Museum Hof van Busleyden and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Ghent Legal History Institute, the Belspo IAP Justice & Populations. The Belgian Experience in International Perspective and the Belspo IAP City & Society. Scientific Committee: Marc Boone (Ghent University) Bruno De Wever (Ghent University) Stefan Huygebaert (Ghent University/FWO) Samuel Mareel (Museum Hof van Busleyden/Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp/Ghent University) Georges Martyn (Ghent University) Vanessa Paumen (Flemish research centre for the arts in the Burgundian Netherlands/ Groeningemuseum) Xavier Rousseaux (UCL) Nathalie Tousignant (USL)

(I apologize for the formatting--converted from PDF--Ed.)

A New Book on Juridical Space From Leif Dahlberg

Via Daniela Carpi of AIDEL:

Leif Dahlberg, Professor in Communication at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and Associate Professor in Comparative Literature, Stockholm University, Sweden, has published Spacing Law and Politics (Routledge, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

Examining the inherent spatiality of law, both theoretically and as social practice, this book presents a genealogical account of the emergence and the development of the juridical. In an analysis that stretches from ancient Greece, through late antiquity and early modern and modern Europe, and on to the contemporary courtroom, it considers legal and philosophical texts, artistic and literary works, as well as judicial practices, in order to elicit and document a series of critical moments in the history of juridical space. Offering a more nuanced understanding of law than that found in traditional philosophical, political or social accounts of legal history, Dahlberg forges a critical account of the intimate relations between law and politics that shows how juridical space is determined and conditioned in ways that are integral to the very functioning – and malfunctioning – of law.

 

For a 20% discount, enter the code FLR40 at checkout.

Per the publisher: Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount and only applies to books purchased via the website. For more details, or to request a copy for review, please contact: Soundus Zahir, Marketing Assistant, Soundus.Zahir@tandf.co.uk

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The Writing On the Walls

Allison Meier (Hyperallergic) discusses Matt Champion's new book Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches (Ebury Press), and his discoveries of pre-Reformation marks and messages from the non-aristocracy on medieval church walls. These messages, says Dr. Champion, head of the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey, tell us a lot, both about medieval belief and about social interaction. He also notes that these carvings, previously assumed to be the work of non-mainstream worshippers like Wiccans, for example, are actually more likely to be examples of medieval understandings of the world around them. "'[T]he fact that such finds often lead to them being ascribed to modern Wiccans, devil worshippers or hoaxers is a sign of just how mentally remote we are today from the commonplace beliefs of the medieval church.'"

Cross-posted to Law and Magic Blog.

Law, Architecture, and the EU Preliminary Ruling Procedure

Marc de Werd, Professor of European law (Maastricht University) and judge in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in the Netherlands, uses an architectural analogy to dissect the EU preliminary ruling procedure. Link here to the essay, published at 22 Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 1 (2015), which is a must-read.

The Representation of Canadian Law In Art and Architecture

David DesBaillets, University of Quebec, Montreal (UQAM), Faculty of Law; University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, has published Representations of Canadian Justice: The Iconography and Symbolism of the Supreme Court of Canada. Here is the abstract.

The goal of this paper would be to bridge the world of artistic and architectural representations of the law, primarily in the form of the constitutional court house, and the legal cultures and values that inspire their design. I will proceed by undertaking a comprehensive research of the Supreme Court of Canada, including its history, esthetics, architectural and design innovations, personal input of the architects, social and historical contexts, as well as some of the legal and constitutional concepts that they embody. The assumption of my hypothesis being constitutional court houses, with their often impressive artistic details and inscribed legal maxims, seem to possess a quasi-spiritual significance, being an extension of what has become in many societies, especially developed liberal democracies with strong rule-of-law traditions, the secular approximation of a religious institution and, thus, transform the courts into a kind of temple of law. However, the challenge of creating a courthouse, especially the Supreme Court, that reflects the legal traditions and social norms (the former often being in conflict with the latter) as well as the ever evolving aspirations of a dynamic and highly diverse, pluralistic society such as Canada’s is ,in many respects, an impossible one, and it remains an open question whether the image that the court conveys to the visitor, be they layperson or legal official, is ,as Gournay & Vanlaethem state in their essay found in The Supreme Court of Canada and Its Justices 1875-2000: A Commemorative Book , the most “eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation.”

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

Religious Symbols and Constitutional Meaning

Frederick Mark Gedicks, Brigham Young University Law School, and Pasquale Annicchino, European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), have published Cross, Crucifix, Culture: An Approach to the Constitutional Meaning of Religious Symbols. Here is the abstract.

In the United States and Europe the constitutionality of government displays of confessional symbols depends on whether the symbols also have nonconfessional secular meaning or whether, at least, the confessional meaning is somehow absent. Yet both the United States Supreme Court (USSCt) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) lack a workable approach to determining whether secular meaning is present or confessional meaning absent.
The problem is that the government can nearly always articulate a possible secular meaning for the confessional symbols that it uses, or argue that the confessional meaning is passive and ineffective. What matters, however, is not the possibility that secular meaning is present or confessional meaning absent, but whether whether this presence or absence is historically and culturally authentic. Courts largely ignore this, routinely appealing to history and culture to justify government use of confessional symbols without undertaking a serious investigation of either history or culture.
Drawing on the work of C.S. Peirce, we propose that courts ask three successive questions in religious symbol cases: (1) Is the ordinary meaning of the symbol confessional or otherwise religious? (2) Does the immediate context in which the symbol is displayed suggest a possible historical, cultural, or other secular meaning? (3) Is this alternate secular meaning authentically present and genuinely recognized in the history and culture of the place where the symbol is displayed?
We illustrate this approach with Salazar v. Buono, in which the USSCt upheld government display of a Christian cross, and Lautsi & Others v. Italy, in which the ECtHR deferred to Italian court decisions upholding government display of a Catholic crucifix. While the USSCt in Buono and the Italian courts in Lautsi imagine conceivable nonconfessional meanings for the confessional symbol at issue, neither meaning can be found in American or Italian history or culture. In Lautsi, thjerefore, the ECtHR ends up deferring to a nonexistent Italian “tradition.”
Judical denial of obvious confessional meaning and invention of substitute secular meanings for confessional symbols betrays a cultural schizophrenia: Majoritarian religions rail against the secularization of culture and its subversion of belief, yet they insist that their confessional symbols remain at home in this culture. But confessional symbols no longer fit in mainstream culture as confessional — hence their redefinition as secular, even and especially by the majoritarian religions that use them. Ironically, judicial secularization of these symbols to validate their use by government is likely to accelerate and entrench the very secularization that such religions deplore.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. Via Legal Theory Blog.

Yale Law Schools Professors Win Order of the Coif Award For Their Work, "Representing Justice"

Yale Law School professors Judith Resnik and Denny Curtis have won the Order of the Coif Book Award for their magnum opus, Representing Justice.  This award is given only once every two years.  The list of previous winners includes such classics as John Rawls, A Theory of Justice; Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law; Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law; John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust; Guido Calabresi, A Common Law for the Age of Statutes; and Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire, to name only a few.

Previously this book won the award from the Association of American Publishers for the outstanding book of the year in the entire social sciences, as well as the Scribes Book Award, and the New York Times wrote a large article about it when it was published.  It is a special book for the Yale Law Library, since it was the third book published in the Yale Law Library Series in Legal History and Reference (Yale University Press) and the library provided an enormous amount of help to Judith and Denny.  In particular, Camilla Tubbs, Mike Widener, and Jason Eiseman all contributed greatly.

Here is a link to the Yale Law School website posting on the award:

http://www.law.yale.edu/news/17621.htm

Thanks for Fred Shapiro for this information.

Here's a link to the Representing Justice website at the Yale Law School Law Library.

Public Constitutionalism In the Ante-Bellum Cemetery

Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Law School, has published 'These Great and Beautiful Republics of the Dead': Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery as UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2304305. Here is the abstract.

“Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery” joins the growing literature on public constitutionalism by focusing on the seventy addresses given at cemetery dedications from Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s address at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831, through the addresses of Edward Everett and Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in November 1863. The addresses were part of a vibrant public discussion of constitutional principles, which spanned such diverse occasions as July Fourth celebrations, arguments in great constitutional cases (like Daniel Webster’s Dartmouth College argument), dedication of public monuments (like Daniel Webster’s speech at the placement of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument in 1824), lyceum addresses, and college literary society lectures. For Americans, especially those of the Whig Party, the Constitution was a key component of culture and a key unifier of the nation.
Rural cemeteries provided support for such constitutional values. They brought beauty and order to the landscape; they served to mediate an impersonal, commercial world and brought uplift through the lessons of morality and patriotism that people learned when they visited the cemeteries. The cemetery supported constitutional values of Union, respect for property, and obedience to the rule of law. For visitors to the cemetery learned about the importance of each of those values at the cemetery. It was an instructor of values; its ordered lanes and graves also served as a sign of the health of the Christian republic. For the cemetery fulfilled duties owed the past. The cemetery inspired sentiments of love of family and country. People would leave the cemetery inspired to preserve the United States as a Christian republic. Finally, these abstract ideas were promoted through private charitable corporations. Those private organizations brought the community together to promote the republic.
The cemeteries were, thus, one important institution – along with the schools, churches, civic associations, and businesses – that helped create and preserve the Union. The cemetery dedication addresses, like other addresses designed to promulgate constitutional ideas, mixed appeals to economics, morality, religion, and political theory with legal and constitutional ideas. Rural cemeteries promoted Whig constitutional ideals about order, patriotism, and Union. Those values were at the center of the debate over the response to secession and they were put into practice by soldiers along Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg in 1863. Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, thus, reflects the appeals to sentiment and Constitution that were so frequently invoked in the thirty years before the War.
This article reveals an important and neglected role of oratory in disseminating constitutional ideas, as well as the significance of rural cemeteries to public constitutional thought. This hidden history reveals how those ideas mobilized support for Union and, thus, how public constitutional thought affects the actions of voters, jurists, and politicians. 

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Comparative Popular Culture Images of Lawyers

Lorin Geitner, Claremont Graduate University, has published Social Architecture and the Law: Law, Through the Lens of Religion. Here is the abstract.

How can we account for the differing popular images of attorney in various countries? One way of doing so may be to bring a paradigm developed in religious studies to examine the most publically accessible and prototypical venue for attorneys, the courtroom. Specifically, applying the model of critical spatial studies developed by Lefebvre and Soja in order to examine religious ritual space to bear on a different kind of ritual space, the courtroom, its structure, organization, and use may illuminate both societal understandings of how the law relates to the citizen, but also inform the differing perception and status of lawyers in the United States, Britain, and China.

 Download the full text of the paper from SSRN at the link.

Images of Justice

Judith Resnick, Yale University Law School, has published "Representing Justice: From Renaissance Iconography to Twenty-First Century Courthouses," as 151 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139 (2007).

All over the globe, nations rely on a statue of a large hulking woman (sometimes named Justice, sometimes Justicia, sometimes Themis, and usually holding scales and sword) to symbolize that their justice systems have aspirations of fairness and impartiality and also to lay a claim to power. The attributes associated with this Justice image - a woman with scale, sword, and sometimes a blindfold - have a remarkable longevity, as can be seen in cartoons and advertisements, as well as in courthouses.

This Lecture provides a multi-century, cross-cultural visual narrative of both continuity and change in the use of adjudication by governments seeking to legitimate their authority to impose their law through judges. From the story of the Judgment of Solomon to the Town Halls of Siena and Amsterdam, one can find examples of adjudication, a task of governance that predates democracy. From those walls and the allegories that they represent, one can learn how adjudicatory practices contributed to democratic ideology by generating norms that decisionmakers not be corrupted by payments from one side, that their decisions be predicated on information rather than be arbitrary, and that they hear both sides (audi alterum partem).

But democracy has radically increased the demand for adjudication as it provided rights of access to all persons, now seen as equal before the law. That demand in turn has transformed the function and some of the processes of adjudication. The pattern of an expansion of adjudicatory rights is echoed around the world, as can be seen by the many countries with major new buildings of courts and the growth of transnational courts.

This Lecture thus also maps the challenges that democracy poses for adjudication. The responses to the growth in demand has resulted in a shift of many decisions to alternative forms of decisionmaking that limit public access to adjudication. In the United States federal system, for example, fewer than two of one hundred civil cases start a trial. Further, administrative adjudication is increasingly important, as tens of thousands of hearings are held annually in federal agencies dealing with federal benefits, employment discrimination, veterans and immigration. But these proceedings are not readily accessible to street traffic.

By reviewing the pictorial history of adjudicatory processes, we raise the question of the future trajectory of adjudication. Even as new courthouses are built around the world, the opportunities for persons to use them may be narrowing. Moreover, the didactic messages conveyed are often more celebratory than reflective of the obligations, under democracy to make accessible justice and to respond to injustice. With rare exceptions (such as the Constitutional Court of South Africa), the iconography of justice has not yet come to reflect the infusion of norms that democracy brings to adjudication.

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