This study aims at dismembering the allegorical figure of Lady Justice, organ by organ, limb by limb, as I believe the allegorical medium can be an effective tool for the exposure of affective justice. As an attempt to imagine some of the multifarious responses of those who originally encountered her bodily presence, it gives a central place to the physiological substrate of judicial ethics, locating it within the history of gestures and postures as they are shared by judges, litigants and citizens across the whole social body. Beyond the conventional objects of art historians, setting aside styles and schools, Lady Justice may be seen as law's conscience, an archetype of the judge's daimon, and an affective, numinous address to his consciousness.

In rendering the history of Lady Justice as a chapter of political and judicial anatomy, this study claims to unearth some of the elementary structures on which European visual regimes are based. Justice cannot be only reduced to an extrinsic and formal iconological notion. She belongs closely to the effects of ambiguous rituals, where decorous images can easily be subjected to bold inversions. Images of Justitia aim at clarifying the antagonistic essence of justice by embodying its innermost struggles. This book is born out of an investigation into judicial symbolism in ancient courts of justice, from the perspective of the longue duree. Cicero (De officiis 3.17) famously claimed, ‘we have no solid and express effigy of true law and genuine justice; but we can enjoy shadows and images to represent them’ (‘Nos veri juris german.que justiti. solidam et expressam effigiem nullam tenemus: umbra et imaginibus utimur’).