Reformation,Regulation and the Image: Sumptuary Legislation and the Subject of Law

This article considers the development of the individual subject of law and his constitutional status in the early modern English State, within the context of sumptuary legislation enacted by the Crown and the Inns of Court. During the sixteenth century, the legal community took upon itself the role of exemplifying the correct use of symbols and of elucidating the purpose of sumptuary law. The image of the lawyer was manipulated to represent the inherent divinity of common law. The reformation of the image was inevitably influenced by the doctrinal concepts of the European Reformation and is a graphic indication of the centrality of Anglicanism to the development of early modern common law. I discuss these developments with reference to theories of the image proposed by Goodrich, Legendre and Marin. I refer also to Carlyle's satirical treatise on the symbolism of clothes,Sartor Resartus. The constitution of clothes represents the idea of citizenship and the centrality of reason to the body-politic. The rediscovery of classical texts during the Renaissance was instrumental in shaping a constitution in which an embryonic social contract was apparent, as represented in the sumptuary legislation of the Inns of Court. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Bodies of Law: the Divine Architect,Common Law and the Ancient Constitution

This article addresses the architecture of the four Inns of Court inLondon as repositories for the body of law (corpus iuris). Thebuildings are perceived as visual representations of the unwrittenconstitution; evidence that the sign, not the text, remains thepredominant form through which the constitution manifests its content.It is in this context that the self-governing Inns are interpreted asmicrocosms of the City of God, envisaged by Saint Augustine andprefigured in ancient Greece by the Republic of Plato. The Innssynthesise these classical and Christian precepts; thereby creatinga unique commonwealth whose Utopian ideals are based on the applicationof Justitia, or righteousness: an ethical rather than alegal concept which underpins the English constitution. The argumentproposes a correlation between architectural development at the Inns andthe challenge posed to the institutional authority of the law by the newlearning of the Renaissance. It is the semiotics of legal architecturerather than its historical provenance which is central to my analysis. Iattempt to comprehend the effect of the influences outlined above on theform and content of the common law, the legal institution and theancient constitution.