My friend, Judith Resnik, a distinguished professor of law at Yale, has spent a lifetime studying justice iconography all over the world. It is her hobby.
I have learned from her that one of the earliest images of Justice with covered eyes is a woodcut from 1494 entitled “The Fool Blindfolding Justice,” an illustration for a book called “The Ship of Fools.” The interpretation of the blindfold is not positive or constructive, but rather a warning against judicial error. The author, Sebastian Brant, who was a lawyer and law professor, equated blindness with sin, ignorance and mistakes.
A similar woodcut, in the city of Bamberg, entitled “The Tribunal of Fools” from the same time period, depicts a presiding justice and four colleagues, all blindfolded and wearing jesters’ caps. The legend on the scroll shown above their heads reads: Out of bad habit these blind fools spend their lives passing judgments contrary to what is right.
[For more on this story by Judge Cindy Lederman, go to https://jjie.org/2018/09/10/ju...send-people-to-work/]
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