Epigraphic Rituals and Legal Authority: A Visual Epistemology of Modern Laws

Laws signed by heads of state sit at the apex of national legal systems. The printed collections in which they are compiled are concerned with the semantic content of the law rather than with its appearance. A look at the manuscripts of these laws, however, reveals a tapestry of scripts, stamps, letterheads, and signatures written with a plethora of instruments on a variety of papers. Recovering the materiality of these laws provides a new approach to understanding the rituals that produce legal authority. Japanese laws began to be typed in 1923, but only from the fourth page onwards. The first three pages included everything from the signature of the emperor to the imperial seal, the names of the relevant ministers, and a short proclamation of the law, all of which were handwritten. The deployment of both handwriting and typewriting in the same legal text shows the different roles that each played in channeling authority. Later printed collections of laws transformed their appearance, hiding these expressions of authority. Although Japanese laws included more handwritten text than the laws of most other states, the mix of typewriting and handwriting is a universal characteristic of legal documents. A comparison of Japanese laws signed by the emperor with laws signed by heads of state in India, Turkey, and Lebanon in the twentieth century will show how a visual epistemology of written documents can serve to understand the aesthetics of written texts as inherent to their discursive function.