Lady Justice - (Edinburgh Studies in Law, Justice and the Visual) by Valérie Hayaert (Hardcover)

About the Book

Dismembering and remembering the sensual and spiritual body of Lady Justice in this wholly novel interpretation of the optical allegory of Iustitia.

Book Synopsis

Lady Justice: An Anatomy of Allegory leaves conventional readings of this pivotal figure in European legal history far behind. Hayaert's study brings together an analysis of thousands of images from the period 1400 - 1600, many of them previously overlooked, including artwork, frontispieces, legal texts, sculptures and statues in public spaces and in court buildings scattered across six countries. Lady Justice is taken apart and considered afresh - organ by organ, limb by limb, digit by digit, making a case for a treatment of allegory in all its complexity, ambiguity and affective force.
This unique interdisciplinary study exceeds the iconographic orthodoxy of art historians and the reductive interpretations of legal historians alike. Setting aside styles and schools, ranging widely across time and space, Hayaert identifies Lady Justice as the seat of law's conscience, an archetype of the judge's daimon, and an affective, numinous address to all who, over the course of seven centuries, have found themselves moved by her redolent and inextinguishable presence.

From the Back Cover

Dismembering and remembering the sensual and spiritual body of Lady Justice in this wholly novel interpretation of the optical allegory of Iustitia. Lady Justice: An Anatomy of Allegory leaves conventional readings of this pivotal figure in European legal history far behind. Hayaert's study brings together an analysis of thousands of images from the period 1400 - 1600, many of them previously overlooked, including artwork, frontispieces, legal texts, sculptures and statues in public spaces and in court buildings scattered across six countries. Lady Justice is taken apart and considered afresh - organ by organ, limb by limb, digit by digit, making a case for a treatment of allegory in all its complexity, ambiguity and affective force. This unique interdisciplinary study exceeds the iconographic orthodoxy of art historians and the reductive interpretations of legal historians alike. Setting aside styles and schools, ranging widely across time and space, Hayaert identifies Lady Justice as the seat of law's conscience, an archetype of the judge's daimon, and an affective, numinous address to all who, over the course of seven centuries, have found themselves moved by her redolent and inextinguishable presence. Valérie Hayaert is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie EUTOPIA-SIF COFUND Fellow at the University of Warwick, Criminal Justice Centre.

Review Quotes

A veritable treasure trove of Justices in multiple media, made in Europe mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and covering a rangy span from the 1300s to the early twenty-first century. In presenting such a gorgeous array (literally: images of almost all works discussed are beautifully reproduced in the book), Hayaert immeasurably enriches our discipline's reference points for imagining justice in female form.--Isobel Roele "Frontiers of Sociolegal Studies"

With breathtaking erudition and nuance, Hayaert's Lady Justice shows us the historic power--juridical, ethical, affective--of this key allegorical figure. In Justice's gestures, postures, choreography, her contradictions and enigmas, we find both "the monstrosity of human judgement" and a longing to repair law's estrangement from justice. A major achievement.-- "Julie Stone Peters, Columbia University"

About the Author

Valérie Hayaert is Research Fellow at the Criminal Justice Centre of the University of Warwick. She is author of Mens emblematica et humanisme juridique (Librairie Droz, 2008), co-editor with Mara R. Wade of Emblematica: Essays in Word and Image Volume 1 (Librairie Droz, 2017) and co-editor with Peter Goodrich of Genealogies of Legal Vision (Routledge, 2015).