Current Issue

In February 2011, the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, along with the Whitney Humanities Center, the Yale Law School, and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund, co-sponsored a symposium, entitled Courts: Representing and Contesting Ideologies of the Public Sphere. This symposium brought together a diverse group of participants (ranging from historians of ancient Egypt to contemporary legal scholars) to consider public adjudication and the shifts in the functions of courts and democracies. The array of literacies—all focused on the common point of the visual and material representations of adjudication—produced not only a lively and intense exchange but also a series of papers that deepen an appreciation for the role of law in the public imagination. The Journal has compiled these papers into a groundbreaking issue, which will be printed in March 2012. Visit our Subscriptions page to order a copy today!

Representing and Contesting Ideologies of the Public Spheres

Volume 24, Issue 1

Winter 2012

Introduction

        Allison Anna Tait, What We Didn't See Before

Representing Justice

        Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis, Re-presenting Justice: Visual Narratives of Judgment and the Invention of Democratic Courts

Ancient Public Spheres

        Kathryn E. Slanski, The Law of Hammurabi and Its Audience

        J.G. Manning, The Representation of Justice in Ancient Egypt

        Adriaan Lanni, Publicity and the Courts of Classical Athens

        Steven D. Fraade, Violence and Ancient Public Spheres: A Response

Envisioning and Signifying Justice

       Peter Goodrich, The Foolosophy of Justice and the Enigma of Law

        I. Bennett Capers, Blind Justice

        Kristin A. Collins, Representing Injustice: Justice as an Icon of Woman Suffrage

        Oscar G. Chase and Jonathan Thong, Judging Judges: The Effect of Courtroom Ceremony on Participant Evaluation of Process-Related Factors

        John Leubsdorf, Justice Unrepresented

Embodying Justice: The Iconography of the Courthouse

        Douglas P. Woodlock, Communities and the Courthouses They Deserve. And Vice Versa.

        Brian Soucek, Not Representing Justice: Ellsworth Kelly's Abstraction in the Boston Courthouse

        David Rosand, The Color of Justice and Other Observations: A Response

        Ruth Weisberg, The Art of Memory and the Allegorical Personification of Justice

The Architecture of Justice

        Norman W. Spaulding, The Enclosure of Justice: Courthouse Archiecture, Due Process, and the Dead Metaphor of Trial

        Kim Lane Scheppele, Judges as Architects

        Hazel Genn, What Is Civil Justice For? Reform, ADR, and Access to Justice

        William H. Simon, Courthouse Iconography and Chayesian Judicial Practice

        Nancy Gertner, From "Rites" to "Rights": The Decline of the Criminal Jury Trial

        Alexandra D. Lahav, Rites Without Rights: A Tale of Two Military Commissions