Leif Dahlberg Knihy

Focusing on the spatial dimensions of law, the book offers a genealogical exploration of the juridical's evolution from ancient Greece to the modern courtroom. It analyzes legal and philosophical texts alongside artistic and literary works, highlighting pivotal moments in the development of juridical space. This comprehensive study examines the interplay between law and its social practices across various historical contexts, revealing the complexities of legal spatiality throughout history.

The volume "Visualizing Law and Authority. Essays on Legal Aesthetics" compiles revised papers from the international conference "Law and the Image," held in Stockholm on September 24–25, 2010. Contributors from Art history, Cultural studies, Literary and Media studies, and Law explore the intricate relationships between law, media, and visual phenomena. The essays examine the scopic field and regimes of visibility, positing that law is a cognitive and aesthetic domain of normative world-making. Rather than simply inverting Shelley’s notion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," the essays advocate for the development of a legal aesthetics. This approach includes analyzing law as an aesthetic object, such as its capacity to create icons, represented by unreadable texts or textiles. Several contributions highlight how visual art and media can both establish and challenge political power. Others delve into the legal structures embedded within artworks and the art world. Additionally, two essays focus on the role of imagery in legal processes, emphasizing the importance of a legal aesthetics. Despite their diversity, the essays are interconnected, making explicit and implicit references to one another, fostering a rich dialogue among the contributors.