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Visual Legal Commentary

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Law, Culture and Visual Studies

Abstract

Much contemporary legal commentary contains nontextual information—everything from graphs and cartoons to geometric diagrams of the relations among legal concepts. No comprehensive account of this practice exists, so that most of those participating in it today are unaware of the rich tradition from which it derives. This chapter explores that tradition, explaining the relations between visual legal commentary and a broader tradition of visual commentary, as well as the important relations between visual legal commentary and the historical consolidation of legal expertise.

Thanks to Erin McGowan for her outstanding research assistance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example Elizabeth Mertz, The Language of Law School: Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer” 21–22, 58–59, 64, 82, 95 (2007).

  2. 2.

    This phrase is used by Michael MacDonald-Ross, Graphics in Texts, 5 Rev. of Res. in Educ. 49, 76 (1977) (noting that typographers’ core expertise is in “the setting of continuous prose”).

  3. 3.

    On the essentially textual nature of mathematical symbols and notation systems, see, for example, Brian Rotman, Mathematics as Sign: Writing, Imagining, Counting ix, 12 (2000).

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Peter Tiersma, The Textualization of Precedent, 82 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1189 (2007); Bernard Hibbitts, Last Writes? Re-assessing the Law Review in the Age of Cyberspace, 71 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 615 (1996).

  5. 5.

    See especially Peter Goodrich, A Theory of the Nomogram, in Law, Text, Terror: Essays for Pierre Legendre 13 (Peter Goodrich, Lior Barshack, & Anton Schutz eds., 2006); Jennifer L. Mnookin, The Image of Truth: Photographic Evidence and the Power of Analogy, 10 Yale J.L. & Human. 1 (1998); Ana Laura Nettel, The Power of Image and the Image of Power: The Case of Law, 21 Word & Image 136 (2005).

  6. 6.

    For example, Lon L. Fuller, The Forms and Limits of Adjudication, 92 Harv. L. Rev. 327 (1978) (including text in tabular form illustrating modes of participation in various forms of social ordering); Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 Yale L.J. 16, 30 (1913); Karl Llewellyn, Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decisions and the Rules or Canons About How Statutes Are to Be Construed, 3 Vand. L. Rev. 395, 401–06 (1950); Charles Warren, New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, 37 Harv. L. Rev. 49, 87 (1923) (including photostat of manuscript version of 1789 Judiciary Act).

  7. 7.

    For example, the law review has expanded from roughly 500 pages per volume in its first decade of publication to 2000 or more pages per volume in its most recent decade.

  8. 8.

    Since 1949, for example, the Harvard Law Review’s retrospective of the Supreme Court’s previous term has included several pages of tables of data on the opinions issued that term. This practice originated in a 1925 article. Felix Frankfurter & James M. Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court of the United States—A Study in the Federal Judicial System, 38 Harv. L. Rev. 1005, 1016–17 n.35, 1053–54 (1925).

  9. 9.

    For example, the first use of economic box diagrams in the Harvard Law Review was in 1971. Laurence H. Tribe, Trial by Mathematics: Precision and Ritual in the Legal Process, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 1329, 1387–88 (1971). In economics, box diagrams were first used in the late nineteenth century. See infra notes 75–76 and accompanying text.

  10. 10.

    Abraham Fraunce, The Lawier’s Logike, Exemplifying the Praecepts of Logike by the Practice of the Common Lawe 101–51 (1588).

  11. 11.

    See, for example, Sir Edward Coke, I Institutes, facing fol. 1 (1656).

  12. 12.

    See David Hoffman, A Course of Legal Study; Respectfully Addressed to the Students of Law in the United States 34–35, 37–38, 60, 99–101, 150–51, 188 (1817). On Hoffman’s influence, see M.H. Hoeflich, Law & Geometry: Legal Science from Leibniz to Langdell, 20 Am. J. Legal Hist. 95, 112–17 (1986); Steve Sheppard, Casebooks, Commentaries, and Curmudgeons: An Introductory History of Law in the Lecture Hall, 82 Iowa L. Rev. 547, 571 (1997). Around the same time, Bentham used the same device. Jeremy Bentham, Chrestomathia, or An Analysis of Human Understanding (1816).

  13. 13.

    Sheppard, supra note 12, at 588–89.

  14. 14.

    See, for example, Thomas Erskine Holland, The Elements of Jurisprudence 167, 337 (12th ed., 1917); John Salmond, Jurisprudence 19, 83, 157, 164, 226–27, 251, 396, 413–15, 447–48, 497, 581, 629, 707 (J.L. Parker ed., 9th ed., 1937).

  15. 15.

    See Hibbitts, supra note 4; Sheppard, supra note 12.

  16. 16.

    See, for example, Gerard Brown Finch, A Selection of Cases on the English Law of Contract 10, 495 (Richard Thomas Wright & William Warwick Buckland eds., 2nd ed., 1896) (including balance sheet and transcript using brackets).

  17. 17.

    See, for example, Austin Wakeman Scott, A Selection of Cases and Other Authorities on Civil Procedure in Actions at Law 15–16, 171, 199, 209, 521, 522 (1915) (reproducing pleadings); Lawrence B. Evans, Leading Cases on American Constitutional Law xxxiv–xxxv (2nd ed., 1925) (reproducing Bill of Rights, with brackets gathering signatures).

  18. 18.

    See, for example, John E. Cribbett & Corwin W. Johnson, Cases and Materials on Property 607, 775, 1340–42, 1348, 1356, 1359–60, 1368–69, 1371–73, 1515–17, 1532–33, 1542–45 (5th ed. 1984) (including plat, maps, abstract diagrams, and document reproductions); Jesse Dukeminier & James E. Krier, Property passim (5th ed., 2002) (including 98 pages of visual materials); William N. Eskridge, Jr., & Philip P. Frickey, Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy 29, 48, 55–56, 63–64, 69, 104, 153, 705–07, [19]–[58] (2nd ed., 1995) (including flowchart, cartoon, text tables, preference scales, maps, document reproductions, and text and figure tables); E. Allan Farnsworth & William F. Young, Cases and Materials on Contracts 152–53, 169, 193, 235, 279, 454, 456–57, 721, (3rd ed. 1980) (including economic box diagram, document reproductions, and text and figure tables); Lon L. Fuller & Melvin Aron Eisenberg, Basic Contract Law 260–61, 402, 414, 724–25, 727, 729, 833, 910 (4th ed., 1981) (including Ramist tree, figure tables, and balance sheets); Charles O. Gregory, Harry Kalven, Jr., & Richard A. Epstein, Cases and Materials on Torts 217, 639, 650, 652–53, 850, 870 (3rd ed. 1977) (including tables of text and figures, document reproductions, and equations); Charles B. Nutting & Reed Dickerson, Cases and Materials on Legislation 202, 290–91, 489, 492, 495–96, 545, 639–42 (5th ed. 1978) (including flowchart, cartoon, abstract diagrams, and text and figure tables); Jack B. Weinstein et al., Cases and Materials on Evidence 12, 62, 176–78, 337, 599, 1163, 1206 (8th ed., 1988) (including text and figure tables, document reproductions, cartoons, and ad hoc diagrams); Stephen C. Yeazell, Civil Procedure 19–20, 23–24, 57, 59, 71, 149, 175–77, 183–84, 205, 219, 222–23, 231, 236–37, 247–48, 262–65, 292, 298, 340–45, 552, 745, 760, 764–65, 769, 793, 816 (7th ed. 2008) (including Venn diagrams, charts, maps, text tables, and document reproductions).

  19. 19.

    A number of commentators have treated visual commentary in this way. See, for example, James D. Gordon III, Teaching Parol Evidence, 1990 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 647 (1990); William H. Lawrence, Diagramming Commercial Paper Transactions, 52 Ohio St. L.J. 267 (1991); Laurence H. Tribe, Triangulating Hearsay, 87 Harv. L. Rev. 957, 959 (1974).

  20. 20.

    See, for example, Hampton Dellinger, Commentary, Words Are Enough: The Troublesome Use of Photographs, Maps, and Other Images in Supreme Court Opinions, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 1704 (1997) (discussing, inter alia, maps as well as photographs but focusing on diagrammatic representation as a misleading or degenerate form of communication); Mnookin, supra note 5; Nettel, supra note 5.

  21. 21.

    See especially Anita Bernstein, The Representational Dialectic (With Illustrations from Obscenity, Forfeiture, and Accident Law), 87 Cal. L. Rev. 305 (1999); Bernard J. Hibbitts, Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality, and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse, 16 Cardozo L. Rev. 229 (1994); cf. Pierre Schlag, The Aesthetics of American Law, 115 Harv. L. Rev. 1045 (2002).

  22. 22.

    See, for example, Richard J. Ross, The Commoning of the Common Law: The Renaissance Debate Over Printing English Law, 1520–1640, 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 323 (1998); Tiersma, supra note 4.

  23. 23.

    See especially Walter J. Ong, System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism, Cross Currents VII 121 (1957) [hereinafter Ong, System]; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982).

  24. 24.

    See L. Bagrow, The Origin of Ptolemy’s Geographia, 27 Geografiska Annaler 318 (1945).

  25. 25.

    See especially Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I 139–45 (Robert Hurley ed., 1978).

  26. 26.

    Carl B. Boyer, A History of Mathematics 100, 119 (2nd ed. 1991)

  27. 27.

    See Hoeflich, supra note 12, at 99–102.

  28. 28.

    See James Robert Brown, Illustration and Inference, in Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science 250 (Brian S. Baigrie ed., 1996); Thomas M. Humphrey, The Early History of the Box Diagram, 82 Fed. Res. Bank of Richmond Econ. Q. 37 (1996).

  29. 29.

    David Londey & Carmen Johanson, Apuleius and the Square of Opposition, 29 Phronesis 165, 166–67 (1984).

  30. 30.

    See, for example, Algirdas Greimas, On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory xiv, 49 (Paul J. Perron & Frank H. Collins trans., 1987).

  31. 31.

    Aristotle, On Interpretation, chs. 6–7 (J.L. Ackrill ed., 1963).

  32. 32.

    See David R. Olson, The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading 219–21 (1996).

  33. 33.

    Porphyry’s Introduction (trans. & introd. J. Barnes, 2003).

  34. 34.

    Boethius, Commentaries on Isagoge (S. Brandt ed., 1906).

  35. 35.

    See Linton C. Freeman, The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science 21 (2004) (discussing roots of social network diagrams in ninth century European lineage charts).

  36. 36.

    See, for example, J.M. Balkin, The Crystalline Structure of Legal Thought, 39 Rutgers L. Rev. 1 (1986); Duncan Kennedy, A Semiotics of Legal Argument, in Legal Reasoning: Collected Essays 87 (2008); Schlag, supra note 21.

  37. 37.

    Frances Yates traced the practice to the Egyptian Simonides of Ceos, who is said to have been able to recollect the identities of guests at a dinner party based on their positions at the dinner table, despite their being injured beyond recognition by a volcanic eruption, sometime around 500 B.C.E. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory 1–2, 27–30 (1966).

  38. 38.

    On city planning, see H. Gray Funkhouser, Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data, 3 Osiris 269, 273 (1937). On the influence of Ptolemy, see Samuel Y. Edgerton, Florentine Interest in Ptolemaic Cartography as Background for Renaissance Painting, Architecture, and the Discovery of America, 33 J. Soc. Architectural Historians 275, 278 (1974); David Turnbull, Cartography and Science in Early Modern Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces, 48 Imago Mundi 5, 14 (1996).

  39. 39.

    Compare Ong, System, supra note 23, whose argument parallels Elizabeth Eisenstein’s, with Anthony T. Grafton, The Importance of Being Printed, 11 J. Interdisc. Hist. 265 (1980) (review of Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (1979)).

  40. 40.

    See Harold J. Berman, The Origins of Western Legal Science, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 894 (1977).

  41. 41.

    In 1952, Erwin Panofsky argued that the development of linear perspective in fourteenth-century Italy made the scientific revolution possible. See Erwin Panofsky, Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes on the Renaissance Dammerung, in The Renaissance: Six Essays 121 (Wallace K. Ferguson et al. eds., 1962). An argument for seismic change traceable to print technology is associated with Elizabeth Eisenstein, see Eisenstein, supra note 39, although Walter Ong earlier argued along similar lines, see, for example, Ong, System, supra note 23.

  42. 42.

    See, for example, Grafton, supra note 39; Michael S. Mahoney, Diagrams and Dynamics: Mathematical Perspectives on Edgerton’s Thesis, in Science and the Arts in the Renaissance 198 (J.W. Shirley & F.D. Hoeniger eds., 1985).

  43. 43.

    See, for example, Bernstein, supra note 21 (arguing that print encouraged association of text with truth and image with illusion); Peter Goodrich, Critical Legal Studies in England: Prospective Histories, 12 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 195, 225 (1992).

  44. 44.

    For accounts from the spheres of cartography, engineering, and banking, see, for example, Turnbull, supra note 38 (cartography); Brian S. Baigrie, Descartes’s Scientific Illustrations and “la grande mecanique de la nature,” in Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science 86 (Brian S. Baigrie ed., 1996) (engineering); Matthew J. Barrett, The SEC and Accounting, in Part Through the Eyes of Pacioli, 80 Notre Dame L. Rev. 837 (2005). Systematic visual education also dates from this period, culminating in Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures) (1658), an illustrated children’s textbook based on principles that still animate educational theory. See James Andrew Laspina, The Visual Turn and the Transformation of the Textbook (1998).

  45. 45.

    It is commonly noted that print made possible the exact reproduction of not only text but also illustrations. See, for example, Bruno Latour, Drawing Things Together, in Representation in Scientific Practice 19 (Michael Lynch & Steve Woolgar eds., 1988); Walter J. Ong, From Allegory to Diagram in the Renaissance Mind: A Study in the Significance of the Allegorical Tableau, 17 J. Aesthetics & Art Criticism 423 (1959). But this theoretical reproducibility of illustrations did not necessarily enable actual practices of precise reproduction; the expense of printing illustrations, as opposed to text, led to reuse of illustrations and sometimes “scrambled relations between text and images.” Bert S. Hall, The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technical Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in Picturing Knowledge, supra note 44, at 3, 17.

  46. 46.

    This is set out most generally in Lull’s Ars Generalis Ultima or Ars Magna (“Ultimate General Art”) (1305) but runs through all his works. See Frances A. Yates, The Art of Ramon Lull: An Approach to It Through Lull’s Theory of the Elements, 17 J. of the Warburg & Courtauld Insts. 115 (1954).

  47. 47.

    Yates, supra note 46, at 136 (describing conviction by circle drawn in sand).

  48. 48.

    Id.

  49. 49.

    Ian Spence, No Humble Pie: The Origins and Usage of a Statistical Chart, 30 J. Educ. & Behavioral Statistics 353, 358 (2005); Yates, supra note 46, at 167 [Lull]. See also Margaret E. Baron, A Note on the Historical Development of Logic Diagrams: Leibniz, Euler, and Venn, 53 Mathematical Gaz. 113 (1969).

  50. 50.

    See Sun-Joo Shin, The Iconic Logic of Peirce’s Graphs (2002).

  51. 51.

    Cf. Berman, supra note 40.

  52. 52.

    Ross, supra note 22, at 346; Yates, supra note 37 [Memory].

  53. 53.

    Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (1958).

  54. 54.

    Cf. Schlag, supra note 21; Kennedy, supra note 36.

  55. 55.

    Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method (1632).

  56. 56.

    See, for example, J.J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979).

  57. 57.

    See, for example, Foucault, supra note 25; Charles Sanders Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, in Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce 160, 161–62 (James Hoopes ed., 1991).

  58. 58.

    Latour, supra note 45; for similar arguments, see, for example, Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998); Ong, supra note 53 [Ramus].

  59. 59.

    See, for example, Berman, supra note 40; William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (2006).

  60. 60.

    J.H. Baker, The Legal Profession and the Common Law: Historical Essays 156–59 (1986).

  61. 61.

    Berman, supra note 40, at 931–41.

  62. 62.

    See Latour, supra note 45.

  63. 63.

    Katherine Nelson & Lea Kessler Shaw, Developing a Socially Shared Symbolic System, in Language, Literacy, and Cognitive Development: The Development and Consequences of Symbolic Communication 27, 32 (Eric Amsel & James P. Byrnes eds., 2002).

  64. 64.

    See, for example, Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 280–90; Thomas L. Hankins, Blood, Dirt, and Nomograms: A Particular History of Graphs, 90 Isis 50, 52 (1999); Spence, supra note 49, at 353–56.

  65. 65.

    Cf. Michael Friendly, A Brief History of the Mosaic Display, 11 J. Computational & Graphical Statistics 90, 94 (2002) (asserting that all modern forms of statistical graphics were invented by the early 1800s).

  66. 66.

    Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 280.

  67. 67.

    Playfair called diagrams “the best and readiest method of conveying a distinct idea.” Quoted in Spence, supra note 49, at 353.

  68. 68.

    See, for example, Foucault, supra note 25.

  69. 69.

    See Friendly, supra note 65, at 92 [Mosaic]; see also Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 278.

  70. 70.

    Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 279–80.

  71. 71.

    Pioneers of this form were Jean d’Alembert, Pierre Laplace, Augustus de Morgan, and Adolphe Quetelet. Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 296–99.

  72. 72.

    See Florence Nightingale, Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army (1858).

  73. 73.

    See Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 338–42.

  74. 74.

    See, for example, Joseph A. Schumpeter & Elizabeth B. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis 1031 n.10 (1994).

  75. 75.

    See Humphrey, supra note 28, at 39, 40–49.

  76. 76.

    Minard’s “figurative map” (Carte figurative) of the 1812 march of Napoleon’s army on Russia, which used line direction, width, and color to represent attributes of the march, is considered a high-water mark of information graphics. See especially Michael Friendly, Visions and Re-Visions of Charles Joseph Minard, 27 J. Educ. & Behav. Statistics 31 (2002); Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 305–10 (1937). In addition to diagrams of military and transportation information, Minard also created representations of cultural phenomena such as the spread of languages. See, for example, Friendly, supra, at 36 [Minard].

  77. 77.

    See, for example, Anne Beaulieu, Images Are Not the (Only) Truth: Brain Mapping, Visual Knowledge, and Iconoclasm, 27 Sci., Tech., & Hum. Values 53 (2002); Jurgen Link, The Normalistic Subject and Its Curves: On the Symbolic Visualization of Orienteering Data, 57 Cultural Critique 47, 49 (2004) (Mirko M. Hall trans.); Michael Lynch, Discipline and the Material Form of Images: An Analysis of Scientific Visibility, 15 Soc. Studies of Sci. 37 (1985); Wolff Michael Roth & Gervase Michael Bowen, When Are Graphs Worth Ten Thousand Words? An Expert-Expert Study, 21 Cognition & Instruction 429 (2003).

  78. 78.

    See Humphrey, supra note 28.

  79. 79.

    Link, supra note 77.

  80. 80.

    See generally Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor 86–98 (1988).

  81. 81.

    For an overview of the development of learned societies, see the website of the Scholarly Societies Project at the University of Waterloo, which summarizes the number of such societies founded by decade. See Scholarly Societies Project Chronology, at http://www.scholarly-societies.org/chronology_soc.html.

  82. 82.

    See Abbott, supra note 80; Harry Collins & Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise (2007).

  83. 83.

    “Jurisdiction” is Abbott’s term for the functional focus of professional efforts. Abbott, supra note 80, at 59–85, 98–108.

  84. 84.

    See Abbott, supra note 80, at 98–108; Andrew Abbott, Chaos of Disciplines (2001).

  85. 85.

    The British Institution of Civil Engineers, established in 1818, was among the earliest professional societies.

  86. 86.

    Anthropological societies were among the earliest specialized learned societies. Examples include the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1824) and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1843). See also Susan Gal & Judith T. Irvine, The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Difference, 62 Soc. Res. 967, 967–69 (1995).

  87. 87.

    The Royal Statistical Society, originally the Statistical Society of London, was established in 1834 and the American Statistical Association in 1839.

  88. 88.

    See especially Funkhouser, supra note 38, at 273.

  89. 89.

    See, for example, Christopher Tomlins, Framing the Field of Law’s Disciplinary Encounters: A Historical Narrative, 34 Law & Soc’y Rev. 911 (2000).

  90. 90.

    See, for example, Humphrey, supra note 28.

  91. 91.

    See especially Freeman, supra note 35, at 39, 70.

  92. 92.

    John von Neumann & Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944).

  93. 93.

    See, for example, Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics 65, 67, 77–78, 84 (Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye eds., 1916); Tomas Albert Sebeok, Semiotics in the United States (1991); see also supra note 30 [Greimas].

  94. 94.

    See Michael Leja, Peirce, Visuality, and Art, 72 Representations 97, 97–98 (2000). Despite Saussure’s use of diagrams and acknowledgment that linguistics is only one branch of semiology, see Saussure, supra note 93, at 15, the Saussurean tradition focuses mostly on linguistic signs, Peircean symbols that appear in text as blocks of continuous prose.

  95. 95.

    See, for example, Charles Sanders Peirce, “Sign,” 2 Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology 527 (James Mark Baldwin ed., 1901–05), reprinted in Peirce on Signs, supra note 57, at 239, 239.

  96. 96.

    Peirce gave the following illustration of how a sign might be both indexical and symbolic: “That footprint that Robinson Crusoe found in the sand... was an Index to him that some creature was on the island, and at the same time, as a Symbol, called up the idea of man.” Charles Sanders Peirce, “Pragmatism” Defined (ca. 1904), in Peirce on Signs, supra note 57, at 246, 252.

  97. 97.

    Charles Sanders Peirce, One, Two, Three: Fundamental Categories of Thought and Nature (1885), in Peirce on Signs, supra note 57, at 180, 183.

  98. 98.

    Peirce, supra note 96, at 251 [Pragmatism].

  99. 99.

    Peirce, supra note 97, at 181 [One, Two].

  100. 100.

    Peirce, supra note 96, at 252 [Pragmatism].

  101. 101.

    Id. [Pragmatism].

  102. 102.

    Peirce, supra note 97, at 183 [One, Two].

  103. 103.

    Peirce, supra note 96, at 251 [Pragmatism].

  104. 104.

    Id. [Pragmatism].

  105. 105.

    For example, he defined a “diagram” as “mainly an Icon... of intelligible relations.” Id. at 252 [Pragmatism].

  106. 106.

    See, for example, Shin, supra note 50, at 19, 27. On Peirce’s never-completed plan to generate a graphic grammar for the representation of logical relations that would bridge the Euclidean tradition and that of probabilistic thinking, see Roberta Kevelson, The Law as a System of Signs 79–101 (1988) (discussing Peirce’s planned “delta” graphs as form suited to the semiotic features of judicial decisions).

  107. 107.

    See especially Leja, supra note 94, at 113–15.

  108. 108.

    See Link, supra note 77; Lynch, supra note 77.

  109. 109.

    See, for example, Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols 58, 69, 88 (1968); Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939).

  110. 110.

    See Shin, supra note 50, at 170–72.

  111. 111.

    See Collins & Evans, supra note 82.

  112. 112.

    See, for example, Jean-Francois Rouet, Monik Favart, M. Anne Britt, & Charles A. Perfetti, Studying and Using Multiple Documents in History: Effects of Discipline Expertise, 15 Cognition & Instruction 85 (1997).

  113. 113.

    See Ong, supra note 23 [System].

  114. 114.

    See, for example, Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (1969).

  115. 115.

    See, for example, Ong, supra note 53 [Ramus]; Latour, supra note 45.

  116. 116.

    See, for example, Mike Scaife & Yvonne Rogers, External Cognition: How Do Graphical Representations Work?, 45 Int’l J. Human-Computer Studies 185, 200 (1996) (noting reliance on intuition in previous studies of the relation between graphics and cognition).

  117. 117.

    Julie Sarama, Douglas H. Clements, Sudha Swaminathan, Sue McMillen & Rosa M. Gonzalez Gomez, Development of Mathematical Concepts of Two-Dimensional Space in Grid Environments: An Exploratory Study, 21 Cognition & Instruction 285, 288, 322 (2003).

  118. 118.

    Findings about language acquisition support the “schema” theory of cognition, which regards it as based on patterns of apprehension, rather than on manipulation of language-like propositions. See, for example, Joost A. Breuker, A Theoretical Framework for Spatial Learning Strategies, in Spatial Learning Strategies: Techniques, Application, and Related Issues 21, 30–31 (Charles D. Holley & Donald F. Dansereau eds., 1984); William A. Roberts, Spatial Representation and the Use of Spatial Codes in Animals, in Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought 15, 39 (Merideth Gattis ed., 2001). Contrary to Piaget’s theory, children seem to acquire vocabulary for abstractions as early as vocabulary for concrete objects, largely based on exposure to patterns of use of such terms, rather than on internalizing information about the terms’ referential meaning. Nelson & Shaw, supra note 63, at 39, 41–43, 47–53.

  119. 119.

    See, for example, Merideth Gattis, Space as a Basis for Abstract Thought, in Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, supra note 118, at 1, 2, 5 (noting variety of models for the relation between extrinsic and intrinsic form or visual percepts and schemas); Brendan McGonigle & Margaret Chalmers, Spatial Representation as Cause and Effect: Circular Causality Comes to Cognition, in Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, supra note 118, at 247, 250–75; Susan N. Friel, Frances R. Curcio, & George W. Bright, Making Sense of Graphs: Critical Factors Influencing Cognition and Instructional Implications, 32 J. for Res. in Math. Educ. 124, 125 (2001); Scaife & Rogers, supra note 116, at 186–87, 209.

  120. 120.

    See, for example, Rotman, supra note 3, at 28, 41; and see generally Charles Sanders Peirce, The Fixation of Belief (1877), in Peirce on Signs, supra note 57, at 144–59.

  121. 121.

    Sarah Guri-Rosenblit. Effects of a Tree Diagram on Students’ Comprehension of Main Ideas in an Expository Text with Multiple Themes, 23 Reading Res. Q. 236, 243–44 (1989) (finding that the use of tree diagrams assists recall of complex information in a text). For similar conclusions, see Ernest T. Goetz, The Role of Spatial Strategies in Processing and Remembering Text: A Cognitive-Information Processing Analysis, in Spatial Learning Strategies, supra note 118, at 47, 56.

  122. 122.

    This work refutes the contentions of, for example, Stephen Pinker, A Theory of Graph Comprehension, in Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Seeing 73 (R. Freedle ed., 1990) (arguing that the salient elements of any graph will be evident to experts).

  123. 123.

    Sarama et al., supra note 117, at 299–316.

  124. 124.

    Roth & Bowen, supra note 77, at 430, 441–45, 466, 470 [Expert-Expert].

  125. 125.

    Wolff Michael Roth & G. Michael Bowen, Professionals Read Graphs: A Semiotic Analysis, 32 J. for Res. in Mathematics Educ. 159, 160, 165, 168–69, 185 (2001).

  126. 126.

    Gary L. Blasi, What Lawyers Know: Lawyering Expertise, Cognitive Science, and the Functions of Theory, 45 J. Legal Educ. 313, 318, 335, 342–44 (1995); Rouet et al., supra note 112, at 86, 102 (distinguishing between domain (content) expertise and discipline (method, problem-solving) expertise and noting that both involve the use of schemas but that the latter form of expertise extends to the treatment of texts); see also Beaulieu, supra note 77, at 56, 74–75 (2002) (discussing complex relationship of fMRI researchers to visual aspects of fMRI images as tokens of expertise); Lynch, supra note 77; Scaife & Rogers, supra note 116, at 199, 201, 206.

  127. 127.

    Richard Lehrer & Leona Schauble, Symbolic Communication in Mathematics and Science: Co-Constituting Inscription and Thought, in Language, Literacy, and Cognitive Development, supra note 63, at 189.

  128. 128.

    Lehrer & Schauble, supra note 127, at 168.

  129. 129.

    See, for example, sources cited supra notes 5 & 20 [Dellinger et al.].

  130. 130.

    Document reproductions include reproductions of letters, invoices, advertisements, contracts, and pleadings, typeset along with text or reproduced in facsimile form. This is perhaps the most widespread and long-lived visual practice in legal commentary. A good example is Warren, supra note 6, at 87 (1923) (including photostat of manuscript of 1789 Judiciary Act). There has been very little work on this practice, and I plan to address it in a separate project.

  131. 131.

    See, for example, F.W. Maitland, The History of the Register of Original Writs, 3 Harv. L. Rev. 212, 221–23 (1889).

  132. 132.

    See, for example, Notes from Professor Langdell’s Report on the Law School, 2 Harv. L. Rev. 333, 333 (1888).

  133. 133.

    See, for example, Samuel B. Clarke, Criticisms Upon Henry George, Reviewed from the Stand-Point of Justice, 1 Harv. L. Rev. 265, 283 n. (1888).

  134. 134.

    See discussion supra notes 26–28 and accompanying text.

  135. 135.

    For example, in an article on constitutional law, a footnote including a table illustrating the average tenure of Supreme Court justices during recent presidencies makes visible the equivalency of individuals’ occupation of institutional roles, turning their mortality into a political epiphenomenon. See Bruce Ackerman, The New Separation of Powers, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 633, 707 n.163 (2000).

  136. 136.

    See Mertz, supra note 1, at 76–82.

  137. 137.

    Id.

  138. 138.

    Id. at 45–46.

  139. 139.

    See, for example, Dellinger, supra note 20.

  140. 140.

    The earliest equation in the Harvard Law Review appeared in an 1898 article on joinder of claims, G. Rowland Alston, Joinder of Claims Under Alternate Ambiguities, 12 Harv. L. Rev. 45, 46 (1898), and the earliest graphic diagrams in the periodical that were neither document reproductions, tables, nor Ramist trees but geographic diagrams in a 1902 article on mining law, John Maxcy Zane, A Problem in Mining Law: Walrath v. Champion Mining Company, 16 Harv. L. Rev. 94, 97, 108 (1902). The first line graph did not appear until 1963, Hans Zeisel & Thomas Callahan, Split Trials and Time Saving: A Statistical Analysis, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 1606, 1615 (1963); the first box diagram did not appear until 1971, Tribe, supra note 9, at 1387–88 [Trial].

  141. 141.

    See Tomlins, supra note 89.

  142. 142.

    See the parody of these forms in Kenneth Lassen, Commentary, Scholarship Amok: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 926, 938 n.60 (1990) (including box diagram demonstrating relationships between determinants of scholarship and tenure).

  143. 143.

    Some diagrams are difficult to classify as either purely conventional or ad hoc, particularly such basic forms as Venn diagrams and square-of-opposition quadrilaterals.

  144. 144.

    See, for example, John E. Cribbett, Principles of the Law of Property 28, 115 (2d ed., 1975); Sandra H. Johnson, Timothy S. Jost, Peter W. Salsich, Jr., & Thomas L. Shaffer, Property Law: Cases, Materials, and Problems 701–02 (1992).

  145. 145.

    See, for example, John Henry Wigmore, Select Cases on the Law of Torts 865 (1912).

  146. 146.

    See, for example, George P. Costigan, The Classification of Trusts as Express, Resulting, and Constructive, 27 Harv. L. Rev. 437, 437, 461, 462 (1913); Roscoe Pound, Classification of Law I, 37 Harv. L. Rev. 933, 957–59, 962–67 (1924) (omitting brackets); Lea Brilmayer, Colloquy, Related Contacts and Personal Jurisdiction, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1444, 1454 (1988); Note, The Price of Everything, the Value of Nothing: Reframing the Commodification Debate, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 689, 689 (2003).

  147. 147.

    See, for example, Tribe, supra note 19, at 959 [Triangulating]; Richard Thompson Ford, The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 1841, 1921 (1994); Michael A. Heller, The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 621, 632, 671 (1998).

  148. 148.

    See Mertz, supra note 1, at 45–83.

  149. 149.

    See, for example, J.R. Kirby, P.J. Moore, & N.J. Schofield, Visual and Verbal Learning Styles, 13 Contemp. Educ. Psych. 169 (1988); Laspina, supra note 44, at 58–65; Michael A. Toth, Figures of Thought: The Use of Diagrams in Teaching Sociology, 7 Teaching Sociology 409, 410–11 (1980).

  150. 150.

    The flowering of scholarship debating the merits of “exclusive” and “inclusive” legal positivism in the late twentieth century is a dramatic example of how concerns with professional jurisdiction and institutional legitimacy can affect not just the form but also the content of academic debate. See, for example, Wilfrid J. Waluchow, Inclusive Legal Positivism (1994); The Autonomy of Law (R.G. George ed., 1996).

  151. 151.

    Text-focused understandings of legal interpretation reproduce the tension discussed in connection with ad hoc diagrams: the emphasis on text is said to promote both populism (or access) and judicial restraint (or standardization), when in fact it does neither. See, for example, Antonin Scalia, The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175 (1989).

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    Karen Petroski

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Petroski, K. (2014). Visual Legal Commentary. In: Wagner, A., Sherwin, R. (eds) Law, Culture and Visual Studies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9322-6_30

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