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Judicial Pictures as Legal Life‐writing Data and a Research Method
Author(s) -
Moran Leslie J.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of law and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.263
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1467-6478
pISSN - 0263-323X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00699.x
Subject(s) - institution , focus (optics) , elite , power (physics) , law , position (finance) , political science , sociology , point (geometry) , judicial opinion , politics , business , physics , geometry , mathematics , optics , finance , quantum mechanics
This article examines the use of pictures as a source of data and tools for researching the lives of the judiciary, both the life of the judiciary as an institution as well as the life of individual judges. The point of departure is that image making and image management is of particular importance for the judiciary – an elite in positions of power. The images produced can tell us much about how those who occupy judicial positions shape and represent the nature of the judicial institution and their position within it to themselves, fellow judges, and outsiders. The focus here is judicial visual images, a neglected, sometimes poorly understood and underused source of data. The article explores how found’ and ‘researcher‐made’ pictures can be used to write the life of the judiciary. It considers the challenges that need to be acknowledged and addressed when using visual data.