Judicial Uses of Images Vision in Decision

A judge springs out of his car on the way to court in downtown Chicago and takes photographs of an inflatable rat. A while later he inserts these photographs into a decision involving another insufflated rodent used in a union protest. The increasing use of images in case law and precedent in the common law world provides a novel visual atlas of how lawyers see. Using a corpus of many images drawn from decisions in different common law jurisdictions across the globe, Judicial Uses of Images catalogues, analyzes, and reviews the normative significance and affective force of this new medium of legal expression and judgement. The remediation of law is critically dissected in the terms of the emergent optical criteria and protocols of retinal justice. .

1 - Introduction: A Morphology of Judicial Images
2 - Maps, Diagrams, Schemata
3 - Surplusage: Out of an Abundance of Words
4 - Comedic and Erotic Depictions
5 - Evidential Expositions
6 - Extispicious Depictures
7 - Retinal Justice

Peter Goodrich was founding Dean and Corporation of London Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is Professor of Law and Director of the Programme in Law and Humanities at Cardozo School of Law New York, and Visiting Professor of Legal Studies, School of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi. Author of numerous books on legal theory, semiotics of law, law and literature, and the art of law, his most recent works include Legal Emblems and the Art of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Schreber's Law (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and Advanced Introduction to Law and Literature (Elgar, 2021).