Chandeliers and the Law at the Temple of Justice
Part Two
This is the second entry in an on-going series, “Chandeliers and the Law at the Temple of Justice,” about the legal symbols on the Tiffany chandeliers in the Temple of Justice. The chandeliers can be found in the Washington State Law Library’s Main Reading Room as well as the courtroom.
Much of the legal history and legal symbolism of Europe and the Americas is built upon the foundation set by the Roman Republic and subsequent Empire. Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis provides a great example of systemic recodification for future generations and serves as the base for all civil law systems. The goddess Justitia (or Iustitia), along with her Greek equivalents Themis and Dike, are the basis for our modern image of Lady Justice, and have been used by governments since the time of Emperor Augustus. The chandeliers include yet another symbol of Roman governmental and legal authority, the fasces.
The fasces was inherited from Rome’s Etruscan heritage and symbolize both the penal power of the state and a recognition of the right of a Roman citizen to appeal a magistrate’s ruling. Fasces are a bundle of rods representing corporal punishment and an axe representing capital punishment bound by a red strap. The lictors, magisterial attendants, carried fasces in public and served as bailiffs and guards for Roman magistrates.
The America during the early republic often reached back to the Roman Republic for inspiration and imagery. For example, a lictors holds a fascis next to Justitia in the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court immediately above the famous pronouncement of Equal Justice Under Law. The Jean-Antoine Houdon statue of George Washington in the Virginia State Capitol shows him leaning on a fasces. Daniel Chester French’s statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial has his hands resting on fasces. The 1916 Mercury dime has a fasces on the reverse side.
The fasces symbol was also appropriated as the official symbol of Mussolini’s Partito Nazionale Fascista about the same time the chandeliers were made in the early 1920s thus leading to fasces as the etymological root of the term fascism. Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University, wrote an insightful article for the City Journal in 2014 entitled When Fasces Aren’t Fascist: The Strange History of America’s Federal Buildings. It is important to view the use of a symbol in relationship to both its intent and surroundings. In the case of the chandeliers in the Temple of Justice, the fasces should be viewed in its best light, as a historical symbol of the power of the rule of law and the accordant right to an appeal. (RM)
