Lady Justice: An Anatomy of Allegory

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Valérie Hayaert (Research Fellow at the Criminal Justice Centre, University of Warwick.)

Lady Justice

An Anatomy of Allegory

Valérie Hayaert (Research Fellow at the Criminal Justice Centre, University of Warwick.)

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English

Edinburgh University Press
31 December 2025

Philosophy; Philosophy: aesthetics; Cultural studies; Media studies; Jurisprudence & general issues

Series: Edinburgh Studies in Law, Justice and the Visual

Lady Justice: An Anatomy of Allegory leaves conventional readings of this pivotal figure in European legal history far behind. Hayaert's study brings together an analysis of thousands of images from the period 1400

1600, many of them previously overlooked, including artwork, frontispieces, legal texts, sculptures and statues in public spaces and in court buildings scattered across six countries. Lady Justice is taken apart and considered afresh - organ by organ, limb by limb, digit by digit, making a case for a treatment of allegory in all its complexity, ambiguity and affective force. This unique interdisciplinary study exceeds the iconographic orthodoxy of art historians and the reductive interpretations of legal historians alike. Setting aside styles and schools, ranging widely across time and space, Hayaert identifies Lady Justice as the seat of law's conscience, an archetype of the judge's daimon, and an affective, numinous address to all who, over the course of seven centuries, have found themselves moved by her redolent and inextinguishable presence.

By: Valérie Hayaert (Research Fellow at the Criminal Justice Centre University of Warwick.)
Imprint: Edinburgh University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781474487498
ISBN 10: 1474487491
Series: Edinburgh Studies in Law, Justice and the Visual
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 31 December 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Valérie Hayaert is Research Fellow at the Criminal Justice Centre of the University of Warwick. She is author of Mens emblematica et humanisme juridique (Librairie Droz, 2008), co-editor with Mara R. Wade of Emblematica: Essays in Word and Image Volume 1 (Librairie Droz, 2017) and co-editor with Peter Goodrich of Genealogies of Legal Vision (Routledge, 2015).

Reviews for Lady Justice: An Anatomy of Allegory

A veritable treasure trove of Justices in multiple media, made in Europe mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and covering a rangy span from the 1300s to the early twenty-first century. In presenting such a gorgeous array (literally: images of almost all works discussed are beautifully reproduced in the book), Hayaert immeasurably enriches our discipline's reference points for imagining justice in female form.--Isobel Roele ""Frontiers of Sociolegal Studies"" With breathtaking erudition and nuance, Hayaert's Lady Justice shows us the historic power--juridical, ethical, affective--of this key allegorical figure. In Justice's gestures, postures, choreography, her contradictions and enigmas, we find both ""the monstrosity of human judgement"" and a longing to repair law's estrangement from justice. A major achievement.-- ""Julie Stone Peters, Columbia University""