Legal Emblems and the Art of Law

Peter Goodrich is a Professor of Law and Director of the Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo School of Law, New York. His previous books include Reading the Law (1986), Legal Discourse (1992), Oedipus Lex (1996) and, more recently, Laws of Love (2006) and, with Christian Delage, The Scene of the Mass Crime: History, Film and International Tribunals (2012). He is also co-author and co-producer of the award-winning feature documentary Auf Wiedersehen: Til We Meet Again (Diskin Films, 2011).

• 1. Introduction; 2. Obiter depicta as an element of law; 3. Devising law: a short history of legal emblems; 4. The sovereign likes to hide: visualizing hierarchy; 5. The foolosophy of justice and the enigma of law; 6. The hand of the law and its amputation; 7. Visibilities: persons, things, actions; 8. Conclusion: virtual laws.

'… a thorough work of scholarship … This is a vital thesis that gestures towards another time and towards inexhaustible movements. Without fuller appreciation of the emblem tradition, so elegantly recuperated here, the visual turn in legal scholarship will remain ill conceived and our appreciation of the possibilities of social reorganisation and subjectivity will remain static.' Piyel Haldar, Law and Humanities