Law Commons^™

What Authorizes The Image? The Visual Economy Of Post-Secular Jurisprudence, Richard Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

In law’s visual economy our commitment to justice grows out of a renewed encounter with an interior libidinal source whose ongoing collective investment binds us to the nomos in which we live. We experience this corporeal bond in paintings, films, and video images on screens large and small. In the ethically inflected aesthetic of post-secular jurisprudence, justice is to law as beauty is to art. As distant as an abstract expressionist canvas, as close as any neighbor, or indeed any screen on which the neighbor becomes real to us. That is where we behold the source and instantiation of law’s …

Visual Literacy For The Legal Profession, Richard K. Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

Digital technology has transformed the way we communicate in society. Swept along on a digital tide, words, sounds, and images easily, and often, flow together. This state of affairs has radically affected not only our commercial and political practices in society, but also the way we practice law.

Unfortunately, legal education and legal theory have not kept up. Inconsistencies and unpredictability in the way courts ascertain the admissibility of various kinds of visual evidence and visual argumentation, lapses in the cross examination of visual evidence at trial, and inadequately theorized notions of visual meaning and the epistemology of affect tell …