Law & Order: Capital Punishment and the Power of Man
Where the violence of Justice in Nation as Sovereign and Power is implicit, her partner Law & Order employs a far more heavy-handed symbol of state-sanctioned violence via the fasces bundle he grips in his right hand.
[Photograph: Medium shot of Law & Order with Fasces Bundle]
While today we may consider a fasces bundle to be closely associated with the French Revolution and unity, [13] they had a much more functional use on top of being a symbol for the institutional power of Roman magistrates. The bundles, birch or heavy reeds mounted on an ax, were “portable kits for flogging and decapitation,” [14] that represented the state’s capacity for corporal punishment as an extension of the judicial system. Even if Rhind was drawing purely upon the French interpretation of a fasces bundle, he indirectly ties the Customs House to the fasces’ primary use, and thus state-sanctioned violence. When we look upon his law book and tightly-gripped fasces bundle, the audience can be overcome with unease. Even if the viewer does not know the historical context of a fasces bundle, they still know that this stoic man kneeling by an enthroned representation of Nationhood and mirroring Lady Justice is dangerous.
While it may seem odd that a monument so focused on the innate righteousness of the female form through Justice and Nation includes a male figure, it could be said that Law & Order establishes an ideological division of labor. By making Justice a woman and Law & Order a man, the monument implies that even if Justice is the one making the final decision between 'good' and 'evil,' it is man that exacts punishment. This produces the patriarchal view that while women may be innately good, men are innately rational. For many, we perceive the law to be built on logic, and the tribunal process even more so with its unending fine print and loopholes. Furthermore, the law career has historically been dominated by men in the United States: as of 2022, only 38% of women are lawyers in the United States, an impressive increase from 3% in 1970. [15] Thus, it makes sense that when the monument was sculpted by Rhind in 1908, the natural response was to fashion Law & Order as a man.