Justice as Message Symposium: What We See When We See Law … Through the Eyes of Dame Laura Knight

The eye cannot help but be drawn to the cover of Justice as Message, the new analysis by Carsten Stahn of, to quote the subtitle, Expressivist Foundations of International Criminal Justice. On the high-gloss paper jacket we see a tableau of blacks and browns and olive drab, accented only by the purple of a lawyer’s robe and the teal of a dossier perched on the bar behind him. In front, we see that the bench is buried in paper – paper that turns to ashes as the back wall gives way to a vision of buildings in ruin and, in the far distance, a raging fire. What Stahn has chosen for us to see is the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg as painted by an artist in attendance at that 1945-1946 trial. His own Oxford University Press book ventures far beyond Nuremberg, in time as well as place, as it must if it is to fulfill the promise of its subtitle