A Visual Self-Image of Legal Authority: ‘The Temple of Law’
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100202 |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| Author | Mattias Baier,Bo Carlsson |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A VISUAL SELF-IMAGE OF
LEGAL AUTHORITY: ‘THE
TEMPLE OF LAW’
BO CARLSSON AND MATTIAS BAIER
Lund University, Sweden
ABSTRACT
The focus of this article is on the legal profession’s visual self-image of legal authority.
It takes a departure from the themes of visual legal communication and discusses the
relationship between text and pictures in the legal domain. The discussion concludes
with a reflection on the consequences of the modern pictorial evolution. Bearing this
discussion in mind, will the development of the ICT society (information and com-
munication technology) impose new demands on the legal system, or will the law
resist the sensuality of the pictorial turn? By describing and analysing 254 photo-
graphs produced by The Swedish National Court Administration (Domstolsverket),
the analysis will indicate that the internal visual self-image conveyed by the photo-
graphs supports and maintains the law’s stability and consistency.
INTRODUCTION
This article presents and analyses an image of legal authority, as it is visually
exposed in official legal calendars and legal brochures in Sweden. This topic
is particularly interesting due to the fact that the law in general, and particu-
larly Swedish legal culture, is rarely communicated through pictures.
The analysis will not relate to ordinary people’s experiences or conception
of the legal system. Instead, the focus is on the judiciary’s self-image of legal
authority, not as it is presented to laymen (the ‘common people’), but how
the system is visually communicated internally among legal professionals.
The selection of visual material in the essay (i.e. calendars and brochures)
reflects this departure.
By emphasizing the theme of visual legal communication (e.g. Katsh, 1995)
we receive a socio-legal design ideally adapted to analyse the image of law in
art, pictures and photographs (i.e. visual texts). In order to put forward our
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200206) 11:2 Copyright © 2002
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 11(2), 185–209; 023904
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socio-legal subject, however, the analysis takes a departure in socio-legal
analysis as related to the general image of law or legality (e.g. Cotterrell, 1995;
Ewick and Silbey, 1998).1 In relation to the image of law, socio-legal scholars
have presented different versions of a regulatory crisis, where the legal
system, particularly in the 1980s, has been disputed for several reasons: in-
efficiency, juridification or clientization (e.g. Habermas, 1986; Teubner, 1986;
Santos, 1987; Handler, 1990; cf. Rottleuthner, 1989).
Regardless of a tendency towards either formalism or a growing impres-
sion of arbitrariness and discretion, or even calculation and cynicism, in
relation to legal matters, the basic conception and the foundation of the ‘legal
system’ appears, at a first glance, secure and majestic. Notwithstanding post-
modern scepticism and the increasing impact of visual popular culture (i.e.
tabloids, law movies and crime shows), the image of the law might still be
experienced as a stable system (e.g. Sherwin, 2000). Despite pluralistic as well
as alternative normative sources in everyday life, the formal legal order
appears archetypal for the image of law and legality. In this matter, the visual
presentation of the legal system becomes crucial: how is the ‘law’ visually
communicated? Additionally, how is the ‘legal authority’ visually communi-
cated internally? In answer to the second question, which becomes the main
topic of this article, we will present material that focuses on the Swedish
judiciary’s internal visual self-image of legal authority; an image that supports
and maintains a notion of stability and consistency. Within this focus, the cal-
endars and brochures will indicate a majestic self-image of legal authority that
might function as a visual response to criticism and scepticism, as well as the
‘trivialization’ and ‘demystification’ of the law presented by, for instance, the
soap opera, Ally McBeal.
TEXT VERSUS PICTURE IN THE LEGAL DOMAIN
The socio-legal approach connected to visual legal communication intends
to shed light on the image of law as it is exposed in different forms of pic-
tures. Yet, there are reasons to claim that printed texts have been dominated
by normative sources – bearing a message of values – in modern society,
particularly in the formal legal culture. During the modern era – beginning
with the Age of Enlightenment – we began to place a prominent faith in
printed texts. With the dawn of printed texts it became possible to describe
and present the state of affairs to great numbers of people, more or less
objectively. In this development, pictures disappeared as significant illus-
trations of norms and values. To some extent, the picture became a com-
plement or comic supplement to the text. During this period, pictures were
withdrawn from legal textbooks, because of the emerging belief that
modern law ought to be presented formally, stringently and with credibility.
This means that we ‘tend to take for granted the pre-eminence of the written
text in almost all areas of knowledge, and to regard any accompanying visual
material as subsidiary to it’ (Chaplin, 1994: 3). As a result, we ‘talk about
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“illustrations”, and regard the written text as transmitting the argument
or message to recipients’ (Chaplin, 1994: 3). In such a mode, pictures have
no particular value. Looking in the historical mirror, however, the picture
has been an important instrument for describing justice and injustice,
fairness and unfairness. In this light, we can mention the ‘dubiously inter-
pretable’ sculpture of Blind Lady Justice with her eyes covered, albeit
‘depictive’.2 In art, the image of justice has been presented in different
versions of Lady Justice, as well as other legal motives.3 The idea of natural
law was helped by the idea of Lady Justice being blindfolded: ‘if justice
could be known from within, insight and wisdom were not dependent upon
what was perceived’ (Curtis and Resnik, 1987: 1757). The blindness of Lady
Justice, however, ‘was not only used to signify the distance . . . but also to
signify a failure to see the truth’ (Curtis and Resnick, 1987: 1755). The
sword of Lady Justice, ‘need not only represent the rigour of justice’, but
could also mean cruelty or an unwillingness to reach compromises (Curtis
and Resnick, 1987: 1753). From a historical perspective, the picture has had
a place in legal books, particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, as a
representation of ‘justice’ or ‘law and order.’ The illustrated book, a book
in which text is followed by paintings describing a scene in the text, is a
medieval conception.
The bond between word and image ‘that writing had nurtured over cen-
turies [has] gradually eroded’ (Katsh, 1995: 141). As a result, ‘the history of
the illustrated book in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is an account of a
losing struggle for survival. By 1550 the illustrated book [was] dead’ (Katsh,
1995: 141). In view of this development, Katsh writes:
One of the subtle effects of print was to change how words and images were
used. Print, while providing us with many beautiful books of art, tended to
support text more than images. It was easier and cheaper to print text than
images, particularly colourful images. (Katsh, 1995: 17)
Katsh continues: ‘Partly because of this, the print world of law is a largely
image-less world. In the legal worlds of print, fine print, and black letter law,
there is little other than text’ (Katsh, 1995: 17–18). In consequence, western
legal tradition has become what is presented in print, in legal textbooks rather
than in custom. Whatever we have become, the legal system has been domi-
nated by the printed word (cf. Collins and Skover, 1992). In addition, legal
scholars have traditionally believed that all legal communication can be
satisfied through words. As a result, they find it hard to see how visual com-
munication can improve the communicative potentials of the law (Collins
and Skover, 1992: 145). The tendency to disregard the visual potentiality in
communication can, of course, be found in other fields of knowledge. In this
respect, ‘sociologists habitually focus on talk and texts, which they also use
to communicate their own kind of understanding, or specialist knowledge’
(Chaplin, 1994: 1).4
If one regards modern literature of the law, it is indisputable that the law
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is an institution in which images have had less value than words. (In the
Swedish legal culture, visual images seem to have no merit at all.) Hence, the
legal order can be generally described as a ‘continuum of texts’. Practically
speaking, law and texts appear to have been equivalents. As a consequence,
pictures play, if used at all, a marginal role, as decoration. No doubt, ‘the law
has a strong attraction to the black-on-white colour scheme, whether in
clothing, in words on paper, or even in using a metaphor, such as black letter
law, to capture the either/or character of rules’ (Katsh, 1995: 139). Further-
more, ‘printed law can be pointed to whenever possible distractions such as
politics, ideologies, or personal values begin to influence the judicial process’
(Katsh, 1995: 140). Katsh even wonders, with reference to the absence of
images in...
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