Abstract
Some symbols so skillfully traverse epochs and cultures that they are depicted as almost “natural” embodiments of abstract values. The balance is one of these symbols, adopted to represent justice from ancient Egypt until the present time. Power appropriates this “natural meaning” in order to construct a rhetoric of fairness. Yet, semiotics unveils that the balance, like every symbol, is not natural at all, but underpinned by a specific ideology. From the semiotic point of view, the balance is a device that produces indexes, i. e., causal signs that visually signal an invisible property, weight. Although this translation is not automatic, but based on specific indexical circumstances (such as the type of balance, the weighing techniques, and the measuring standards that are used), the balance is paradoxically turned into a symbol of justice precisely because it is depicted as a non-semiotic device, as an instrument that cannot lie, as a machine.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law
- “Verbal and nonverbal” in semiotics
- The frowning balance: Semiotic insinuations on the visual rhetoric of justice
- Semiotics of visual evidence in law
- Observing laws through “understanding eyes”
- Interpreting law in socio-pragmatic space
- Conceptualizing cultural discrepancies in legal translation: A case-based study
- The first integrated practice of legal translation in modern China: A study of the Chinese translation of Elements of International Law, 1864
- Translations of early Sino-British treaties and the masked western legal concepts
- “Susanna and the Elders”: On the visual semiotic of shame
- Angels, warriors, and beacons: Totemic law, territorial coding, and monumental sculpture in post-industrial landscapes
- Expiration dates: Performative illusions of law and regulation
- From immunity to immunity. From immunity to silence: The case of Gilad Sharon
- Under western eyes: Articulation between indigenous justice and the national judicial system
- Police interpreting: The facts sheet
- The influence of legal tradition on Italian arbitration discourse
- Weighing and balancing of principles in cases with rule paradoxes
- “You have to teach the judge what to do”: Semiotic gaps between unrepresented litigants and the common law
- The semiotic interpretation of legal subjects in China’s new criminal procedure law
- Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
- “Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials
- Institutional interaction in traffic law enforcement in China: Resistance and obedience
- Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt: Determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts
- Les structures sémantiques profondes du code pénal chinois
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law
- “Verbal and nonverbal” in semiotics
- The frowning balance: Semiotic insinuations on the visual rhetoric of justice
- Semiotics of visual evidence in law
- Observing laws through “understanding eyes”
- Interpreting law in socio-pragmatic space
- Conceptualizing cultural discrepancies in legal translation: A case-based study
- The first integrated practice of legal translation in modern China: A study of the Chinese translation of Elements of International Law, 1864
- Translations of early Sino-British treaties and the masked western legal concepts
- “Susanna and the Elders”: On the visual semiotic of shame
- Angels, warriors, and beacons: Totemic law, territorial coding, and monumental sculpture in post-industrial landscapes
- Expiration dates: Performative illusions of law and regulation
- From immunity to immunity. From immunity to silence: The case of Gilad Sharon
- Under western eyes: Articulation between indigenous justice and the national judicial system
- Police interpreting: The facts sheet
- The influence of legal tradition on Italian arbitration discourse
- Weighing and balancing of principles in cases with rule paradoxes
- “You have to teach the judge what to do”: Semiotic gaps between unrepresented litigants and the common law
- The semiotic interpretation of legal subjects in China’s new criminal procedure law
- Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
- “Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials
- Institutional interaction in traffic law enforcement in China: Resistance and obedience
- Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt: Determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts
- Les structures sémantiques profondes du code pénal chinois