The rule-of-law imaginary: regarding Iustitia

Visual depictions are the rule of law. If fashioned with sufficient artistic skill, they function, as I argue in this chapter, as technologies of ‘monumental inscription’. Visualizing the rule of law is effective—because it is affective. I inquire into the logic of visual contention with particular reference to the iconography of Iustitia—the Roman goddess of justice, a distant relation of the Greek goddess Themis as well as of Ma’at, the goddess of justice in the Old Kingdom of Egypt. By tracing the meanings—and manipulations—of what inarguably is the most influential obiter depicta since the invention of law, I bring a decidedly critical perspective to bear on the rule of law. By tracing rule of Iustitia across space and time, I develop an argument about the violence of representation. Due to its visual (and substantive) vacuity, I find, the iconography of Iustitia has been performed in the name of all kinds of utopia, liberal and otherwise. This being so, we stand to gain a phenomenologically richer understanding of the rule of law, then and now, by taking seriously its visual imaginaries.