| Popis: |
What can images of Justice teach us about the norms of judging, the bases of authority to judge and the role of courts over centuries? By looking at the iconography associated with justice and the development of purpose-built structures (today’s courthouses), one can see the radical disjuncture between contemporary theories for legitimating the violence intrinsic in law’s imposition of judgment and their historical antecedents. Simply put, in ancient times, judges were loyal servants of the state; audi-ence members were passive spectators watching rituals of power, and only certain persons were eligible to participate as disputants, witnesses or decision makers. In contrast, today, judges in democratic polities are independent actors in complex and critical relationships with the government and the public. Moreover, everyone – women and men of all colours – is entitled to be in every seat in the courtroom, including the bench. The project of mapping the centuries, images and ideologies producingthose changes is the purpose of our book, Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms. In thisessay, we reflect on one facet – personifications of the Renaissance Virtue Justice, as clear-sighted or blindfolded – to explore how shifting approaches to Justice’s sight illuminate the revolutions in the relationship of judges to the polities that deploy them. As Figure 9.1 illustrates, blindfolds are today affixed to Justice in celebrationof adjudication’s virtues. But for thousands of years, sight was valorized and the failure to see derided. Powerful gods/monarchs were depicted as all-seeing and, from their imperial view, all-knowing. In contrast, blindness and blindfolds denoted the impairments of the wicked and misguided. Through the Mediaeval period in Europe, obscured vision was a marker of various vices. |
