looking beyond the law’s letter

I’m currently remediating my book project Looking Beyond the Law’s Letter: The Court of Chancery and Equitable Justice in Chicago as a graphic history.

Here are drafts of a few pages from my first chapter.

Looking Beyond the Law’s Letter deploys images to link the court’s medieval past to the present day, to expand beyond a traditional academic monograph, and to draw on the ancient art of memory to help us “remember” equity. Nesting local and global state building, the project sites a comprehensive metropolitan history—ecclesiastical, imperial and urban—in Chicago’s Cook County Chancery.

Equity poses a central American paradox. In a nation where trial by jury is an inalienable right, a judge decides a case in a juryless court of equity. And while the rule of law may be sacrosanct, a court of equity can look beyond the law’s letter and consider the dictates of conscience.

Medieval manuscripts deployed extraordinary images to cultivate the art of memory, designed to arouse wonder “as the soul is more strongly and vehemently held by them” according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Such images were to be arranged on particular places, especially on architectural structures.

I have shamelessly borrowed, expanded and altered images from a variety of sources for my own illustrations.

Abbreviations:

Bodlein Library, Oxford (BL)

Chicago History Museum (CHM)

Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (LOC)

National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (NARA)

Newberry Library, Chicago (NL)

Pages (first line references):

Looking Beyond the Law’s Letter

BL MS. Douce 266, fol. 006v. Book of hours, illumination by Pächt and Alexander, Use of Tournai, 1480-1500.

BL MS. Broxb. 89.10 fol. 193r. Book of hours, Dutch, c. 1460-1470.

CHM TrdCat Williams. Picasso under construction, Williams & Meyer Co. Trade Catalog, 1978.

High above Chicago

CHM ICHi-005656. James T. Palmatary, Lithograph of Chicago, 1857.

NL MS 61. Book of hours, Gerard Groote, Netherlands, 1471-1500.

In a stack of Cook County courtrooms

History Makers Digital Archive (Chicago), “The Honorable Sophia H. Hall,” video capture from interview, 2003.

We embrace the concept of equity

Internet Archive. “Mrs. Askew on the Rack,” John Foxe, Book of Martyrs, Hartford: E. Hall, 1833 (1516-1587), p. 200.

Nothing else but God: Justinian, Exordian institutionum, cited in Hermann Kantorowicz, Studies in the Glossators of the Roman Law (Cambridge: University Press, 1938) 53 and 332, n. 74.

Mark Fortier, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2005), 20-22.

Stop

LOC PAGA 7, no. 263, Columbia with flag, American Brew Co., 1890.

BL MS. Canon. Ital. 108, fol. 2v. Dante, Divine Comedy, miniature by Alexander and Pächt, Italian, 14^th century.

Few remember equity

Getty Images 134135924. Robert Natkin, Narcotics Court, Chicago, 1952.

CHM, ICHi-028485. Acme Publishing and Engraving, Cover to Chicago of Today, The Metropolis of the West, 1891.

BL MS. Canon. Misc. 493, fol. 129v. Justinian, Digestum vetus, miniature by Pächt and Alexander, Italian, 14^th century.

For an extended reference to equity’s Roman canonical roots, see Nancy Buenger, “Home Rule: Equitable Justice in Progressive Chicago and the Philippines,” At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), p. 78, n.9.

For Chicago’s innovative courts, see especially Michael Willrich, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and David S. Tanenhaus, Juvenile Justice in the Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Remembering equity

NL MS 61. Book of hours, Gerard Groote, Dutch, 1471-1500.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 49, a.1

An essential source on the art of memory is Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1990.

First, equity is the prerogative

Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, Francisco Herrera the Younger, Saint Thomas Aquinas, c. 1656.

Bibliothèque interuniversitaire (Montpellier), Section Médecine, H 418, fol. 107v. Justinian, Institutes, French, 15^th century.

Brooklyn Museum 41.1275.188. Unknown, San Thomas Aquino, 18^th century.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 120, a.1

BL MS. Holkham misc. 48, p. 123. Dante, Divine Comedy, Italian, 14^th century.

Justinian, Exordian institutionum, cited in Hermann Kantorowicz, Studies in the Glossators of the Roman Law (Cambridge: University Press, 1938) 53 and 332, n. 74.

Bundesarchiv Bild (Germany) 102-10541. George Pahl, Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess in Weimar, 1930.

Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 5.

It was a particular virtue

BnF Gallica, MS Latin 7344, fol. 7v. Une mère porteuse, Livre d’astrologie, French, 14^th century.

BL MS. Bodl. 264, pt. I, fol. 061r. Three dark skinned, bare-legged natives with white turbans, Romance of Alexander, Tournai, 842-c. 1400.

BL MS. Bodl. 264, pt. I, fol. 083r. Prostitute stands before a hut with a closed door, Romance of Alexander, Tournai, 842-c. 1400.

BL MS. Barocci 145, fol. 86v. View of city, Codex, Venice, 1451-1600.

BL MS. Douce 205, fol. 032r. Franciscan friars, Annals of Hainaut, Flanders, c. 1500.

BL MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1, fol. 064r. Aztec male, Codex Mendoza, Mexico, 1541-1650.

BL MS. Bodl, 264, pt. III, fol. 244v.  Distribution of alms, Le Livres du Graunt Caam, English, c. 1400.

For extended references to the concept of the miserabiles, see Buenger (2021), p. 78, n.9.

Second, equity is a juryless court

Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Liber feudorum maior, fol. 01r. Real Cancillería de los Reyes de Aragón, 11^th-13^th century.

BL MS. Douce 204, fol. 006r. Marriage of Mary and Joseph, Speculum humanae salvationis, Spanish, Catalonia, c. 1430-1450.

CHM ICHi-039722. James Newberry, Aljazara Family, 1987.

BL MS. Canon. Misc. 493, fol. 318v. Contract of sale from Justinian, Digestum vetus, Italian, 14^th century.

Frederick Burr Opper, “The Railway Trust,” New York American, 1904.

BL MS. Douce 308, fol. 259r. Personification of drunkeness, Huon de Méri, Le Tornoiement Antechrist, French, 14^th century.

CHM DN-0001019. Boy with a cigarette during strike, Chicago Daily News Collection, 1904.

Buenger (2021), 55, 63-5.

Finally, equity is a jurisprudence

BL MS. Douce 383, fol. 006r. Two knights in combat, Hélie de Boron, Guiron le Courtois, French, c. 1400-1600.

BL MS. Douce 195, fol. 117v. Confession, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meung, Le Roman de la Rose, French, c. 1400-1600.

William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford 1768), 338.

Murray F. Tuley, “Equity Maxims,” 35 Chicago Legal News 437 (1903).

Law and equity jurisprudence has varied over time and place

CHM DN-0078543. William Gotette standing in witness stand, Chicago Daily News Collection, 1925.

CHM DN-0084995. Horace Hull wearing a clerk’s visor, Chicago Daily News Collection, 1928.

Daaim Shabazz, “Judge George Leighton, chess veteran, passes at 105,” The Chess Drum, 14 August 2018.

CHM DN-0082968. Imprisoned person in Joliet Penitentiary, Chicago Daily News Collection, 1927.

CHM DN-0001247. Eight girls sewing, Chicago Daily News Collection, 1903.

Equity was anathema in the early U.S. Republic

LOC Lot 14102, no. 33 {P&P]. Charles Toppan, engraver, “Signing the Declaration of Independence,” American Bank Note Company of Philadelphia, 1840.

NARA, Stone engraving of the Declaration of Independence, America’s Founding Documents, 1823.

Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello) Catalog # 1942-16. Zograscope, English, c. 1800.

LOC LC-B2-2652-5 [P&P]. Judge Mary Margaret Bartelme, 1913.

Amalia D. Kessler, Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 19-20.

Equitable courts have facilitated

NL MS 61. Book of hours, Gerard Groote, Netherlands, 1471-1500.

George Leighton, Associated Press photograph by Paul Cannon in Mitch Smith, “George N. Leighton, Lawyer Who Fought Segregation, Dies at 105,” New York Times, 15 June 2018.

George N. Leighton, “Development of In Rem Powers of Courts of Equity,” 5 National Bar Journal 38 (1947).

Picturing equity

CHM DN-0054745, City Hall Cornerstone, Chicago Daily News Collection, 1909.

John H. Langbein, “The Disappearance of Civil Trial in the United States,” 122 Yale Law Journal 522 (2012).

Embodying the Christian

Cover, Report of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, 1964-1971.

BL MS. Broxb. 89.10 fol. 193r. Book of hours, Dutch, c. 1460-1470.

Sources

NL MS 61. Book of hours, Gerard Groote, Netherlands, 1471-1500.