Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm
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Valérie Hayaert
Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to develop the ongoing research into the survival of allegories of Justice in contemporary courthouses in France (Hayaert 2023) by drawing a comparatist approach and a longue durée perspective. It is a provisional assessment that combines partial results, hypotheses and calls for confrontation. While the allegory of Lady Justice has endured in many contemporary allegories in Europe and the Western world: in the United Kingdom with Banksy, Damien Hirst and Carey Young, in the United States, Australia, South America and Israel, as witnessed by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis’s 2011 monumental study of the interest in the ornamentation of courthouses over the last 50 years or so, what is the situation with the decoration of courthouses in France?1 Why is female allegory declining in court decorations when the number of women in the judiciary is constantly increasing?2 There is a paradox here that certainly merits patient examination. Is it because the genre of allegory is outdated both aesthetically and politically? Beyond the norm and the caprice, what does the eradication of the allegorical figure mean in a place of justice? Doesn’t justice, as an ideal, as a power of affect and as an institution, benefit from being embodied?
Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to develop the ongoing research into the survival of allegories of Justice in contemporary courthouses in France (Hayaert 2023) by drawing a comparatist approach and a longue durée perspective. It is a provisional assessment that combines partial results, hypotheses and calls for confrontation. While the allegory of Lady Justice has endured in many contemporary allegories in Europe and the Western world: in the United Kingdom with Banksy, Damien Hirst and Carey Young, in the United States, Australia, South America and Israel, as witnessed by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis’s 2011 monumental study of the interest in the ornamentation of courthouses over the last 50 years or so, what is the situation with the decoration of courthouses in France?1 Why is female allegory declining in court decorations when the number of women in the judiciary is constantly increasing?2 There is a paradox here that certainly merits patient examination. Is it because the genre of allegory is outdated both aesthetically and politically? Beyond the norm and the caprice, what does the eradication of the allegorical figure mean in a place of justice? Doesn’t justice, as an ideal, as a power of affect and as an institution, benefit from being embodied?
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Foreword XIII
- Introduction: More than (just) words 1
-
Part I: (Just) words
-
Legal perspectives
- Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
- Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
- Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
-
Non-legal perspectives
- Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
- Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
- Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
- Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
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Part II: More than (just) words
-
Speech and gesture
- Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
- Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
-
Image and architecture
- Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
- Chapter 11 Criminal law, court architecture, and the space of justice: Stakeholder perceptions of ‘special’ courts used in child sexual abuse trials in India 293
- Index 319
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Foreword XIII
- Introduction: More than (just) words 1
-
Part I: (Just) words
-
Legal perspectives
- Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
- Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
- Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
-
Non-legal perspectives
- Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
- Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
- Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
- Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
-
Part II: More than (just) words
-
Speech and gesture
- Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
- Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
-
Image and architecture
- Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
- Chapter 11 Criminal law, court architecture, and the space of justice: Stakeholder perceptions of ‘special’ courts used in child sexual abuse trials in India 293
- Index 319
