Legal review: The Art of Justice: The Judge’s Perspective by Ruth Herz

The Art of Justice: The Judge’s Perspective

By Ruth Herz

Hart Publishing, 128pp, £35

With the catchy title of The Art of Justice and an attractive sketch of a court scene on the dust cover I was looking forward to an entertaining read and prospective Christmas stocking filler.

I had fallen into the trap of judging a book by its cover.

What I found was that the interesting drawings and paintings by Judge Pierre Cavellat are little more than a vehicle for the author’s unflattering personal opinions of the judiciary.

The author, Ruth Herz, is a former judge at the Court of Cologne. She is currently a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London.

I would be doing an injustice (heaven forfend) to the author if I did not allow her own words to explain just one of the drawings. Judge Cavellat has executed a sketch of a chair with his gown thrown over it. For former judge Herz that becomes: “He shows his irony in his drawing of the judicial paraphernalia, which make him recognisable as a judge. He has made an abstract portrait of his profession by draping the robe with the ermine fur facing, the mortier…, the book of the law, the files … over a rococo chair with tortured curved legs, animal feet and twisted arms. It is a chair from earlier days, perhaps representing the long history of the judiciary but also their point of reference, looking back in time and not to the future. He manifested his irony by showing them deflated and collapsed, thereby dehumanising them.”

After pages of this kind of stuff you too may find yourself shouting at the page “…they’re collapsed because nobody’s wearing them … and it’s not an abstract portrait of his profession, it’s a drawing of his chair … and its legs aren’t tortured, they’re rococo.”

I say no more about the interpretation of Judge Herz and restrict myself to Judge Cavellat. He presided over courts in France from his appointment in 1929 until his retirement in 1969. He died in 1995. In the course of his judicial career he produced more than 1,000 drawings and paintings, many of the drawings apparently being done while he was actually presiding over the business of the court.

His career progressed through the difficult years of the German Occupation from 1940-44 when, as president of the court in Fougères, he was an inevitable part of the administration collaborating with the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, a few years after the liberation of France he was awarded the Chevalier de la legion d’honneur in recognition of his services to the legal profession.

He clearly had a sense of humour. The last illustration in the book is a photograph taken by him on the day he retired: it shows his gown and mortier hanging on the clothes line in the garden.

To any judges engaging in artwork on or off the bench, beware! You never know who’s going to find your work and attribute all sorts of motivations to you long after you’re gone or ceased to care. But I suppose that’s what art is all about – it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

• Kevin Drummond is a QC and sheriff overseeing courts in Selkirk, Jedburgh and Duns