Genealogies of Legal Vision

It was the classical task of legal rhetoric to make law both seen and understood. These conjoint goals came to be separated and opposed in modernity and a degree of blindness ensued. Legal reason was increasingly deemed to be a purely textual enterprise. Against this constraint and in furtherance of an incipient visual turn in legal studies, Genealogies of Legal Vision seeks to revive the classical ars iuris and to this end traces the history of regimes of visual control. Law always relied in significant measure upon the use of visual representations, upon pictures, architecture, costume and statuary to convey authority and sovereign norm. Military, religious, administrative and legal insignia found juridical codification and expression in collections of signs of office, in heraldic codes, in genealogical devices, and then finally in the juridical invention in the mid-sixteenth century of the legal emblem book. Genealogies of Legal Vision traces the complex lineage of the legal emblem and argues that the mens emblematica of the humanist lawyers was the inauguration of a visiocratic regime that continues into the multiple new technologies and novel media of contemporary governance. Bringing together leading experts on the history and art of legal emblems this collection provides a ground-breaking account of the long relationship between visibility, meaning and normativity.

Peter Goodrich is Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School and Director of the Program in Law and Humanities and is author of Legal Emblems and the Art of Law (2013). Valérie Hayaert is a researcher at the Fondation Bodmer, Cologny, Geneva and author of Mens emblematica et humanisme juridique (2008).

Introduction: The Emblematic Cube, Peter Goodrich And Valérie Hayaert, 1 The Gordian Knot Of Emblemata: From The Labyrinthus Absconditus To The Affirmation Of The Prisca Jurisprudentia, Valérie Hayaert; 2 The Evidence Of Things Not Seen, Peter Goodrich; 3. Metamorphosis, Mythography, And The Nature Of English Law, Paul Raffield; 4 Confessio Infirmitatis, Or: A Productive Digression Put To Good Use In Legal Affairs, Anselm Haverkamp; 5 The Heart And The Law In The Scales: Allegorical Discourse And Modes Of Subjectivization In Early-Modern Religious Emblematics, Agnès Guiderdoni; 6 From Pornograhy To Moral Didactism: How The French Play With Emblems, Christian Biet; 7 The Tongue And The Eye: Eloquence And Office In Renaissance Emblems, Piyel Haldar; 8 Don't Screw With The Law: Visual And Spatial Defences Against Judicial And Political Corruption In Renaissance Italy, Alick Mclean; 9 Epistemological Doubt And Visual Puzzles Of Sight, Knowledge, And Judgment: Reflections On Clear-Sighted And Blindfolded Justices, Judith Resnik And Denis Curtis; 10 Crime Shows: CSI In Habsburg Spain, Bill Egginton