Courtroom proverbial murals in Lebanon: a semiotic reconstruction of justice

Abstract

Inspired by the “rituality” and “symbolism” of the courtroom as a discourse of space, this paper sheds light on the semiotic weight of the tiled-mosaic murals of Arabic proverbs displayed in the courtrooms of the Palace of Justice in Beirut, Lebanon. This paper attempts to draw attention to the discursive importance of these courtroom proverbial murals in the conceptualization of justice in the Lebanese legal and judicial system by unfolding the semiotic code of the proverbial murals. This work categorizes the murals under investigation (20 murals) into three “functional” or semiotic categories: social (six proverbs), quasi-judicial (nine proverbs; three of which are religious, two ethical, and four political) and judicial (five proverbs). On a positive note, this investigation highlights the functionality of the linguistic (i.e. proverbiality) and artistic (calligraphy and design) components of the proverbial murals as a semiotic tool to inter-faith national unity in Lebanon. Nonetheless, the same semiotic features signal a spatially “mutating” justice, from one courtroom to another and thus a socioethical, religious and political relativism in perceiving justice.

Keywords:

• courtroom murals
• proverbiality
• semiotic code
• Lebanese courtroom
• Aramaic and Islamic calligraphy

Notes

1. As accounted for in Brawn (2004), spatial social ordering was pioneered by New Zealand (1993–1996) and followed by the work of the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia in its legal landmark 1997–1999 Review of the Criminal and Civil Justice System in Western Australia.

2. Richardson (2007) categorizes courtroom symbols into fixed (e.g. buildings and architecture), semi-fixed (e.g. wigs, robes, coat of arms) and non-fixed (e.g. behavioral patterns of lawyers, police, bailiffs).

3. Not in the Piercean sense; closer in meaning to “code” or “sign”.

4. President Roosevelt's incentive plan was known as “New Deal” (1933–1936).

5. Investigating the influence of proverbial murals on courtroom players (e.g. defendants, lawyers, the public) is beyond the scope of the present work – see Richardson (2007) for a detailed account on the effects courtroom symbolism: fixed, semi-fixed (i.e. wigs; shields, flags) and non-fixed symbols.

6. Visual codes can forge “conceptual thinking” (Wagner 2009).

7. Orwenjo's article investigates proverbiality in political discourse in Kenya.

8. Despite the use of Colloquial Lebanese Arabic by irregular court players (i.e. witnesses, offenders), the court proceedings only document a translated version of the Colloquial into Standard Arabic (see Khachan 2010).

9. Islamic art is associated with the symmetrical and balanced composition of arabesque mosaics characterized with the abstraction of organic forms into geometric style and vegetative motifs (forms, stems, tendrils and leaves) and the exclusion of figural imagery (for a detailed account on Islamic calligraphy, see Blair 2006).

10. The author failed to locate any background information on the proverbial murals in the Palace of Justice in Beirut; in addition to the lack of documentation on the issue in Law libraries in Lebanon, aged lawyers and judges seemed ill-informed about the murals.

11. An ancient civilization that inhabited Lebanon and parts of the Mediterranean basin; it is also associated with the invention and spread of the Alphabet. The Phoenicians are also reputed for their maritime trade and sea explorations of the old world.