Agape, justice, and law: how might Christian love shape law?

Abstract

enforce contracts and status relationships. The Art of Law edifies but also (and perhaps intentionally) leaves readers wanting more direction and analyses. The ever-present question is about what was put on view. Are we, twenty-first-century viewers, looking at decisions dictated by a governing legal body, or are these artefacts of artistic choice and (as some chapters suggest) whimsy? How are we to understand what the different spectators took to be the messages of the objects we look at now? Furthermore, how do we, living in a world awash with images, glimpse (a word chosen advisedly) the impact on those who looked at the images when put on display. What were the directives judges were supposed to take, for example, when assigned to rooms inscribed with the words ‘Judge ye, as ye shall be judged’? In sum, readers of this volume will learn a great deal about the history of iconography associated with law but less about the translocal political and social forces that render ‘Justice’ legible, that built impressive structures, and that pressed certain narratives into public consciousness. Furthermore, the haunting question addressed by some, but not all, of the authors remains: how to think about the continued legibility of much of this imagery, given that social movements have transformed adjudication into a practice embedded in democracies and, in many countries, have produced courthouses as an icon not only of adjudication but also of government more generally?