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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2015
Exactly 80 years has passed since the completion of the United States Supreme Court building. This comment is not another paper about the importance or historical influence of the greatest of all American institutions, nor about dramatic cases which shaped America, nor about justices and their approaches, nor about characters or world views. It is about architecture and the messages which are sent from the facade of this strong institution to which legal scholars and practitioners from around the world look.
1 L Mulcahy, Legal Architecture: justice, due process and the place of law (London, 2010).
2 P Scott and A Lee, Buildings of the United States: buildings of the District of Columbia (New York, 1993).
3 See International Legal Research Tutorial, Duke University, <https://law.duke.edu/ilrt/cust_law_10.htm>, accessed 7 June 2015.
4 See <http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/East_Pediment_11132013.pdf>, accessed 7 June 2015.
5 See <http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/westpediment.pdf>, accessed 7 June 2015.
6 ‘United States Supreme Court’, <www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/us-supreme-court/>, accessed 7 June 2015.
7 See generally <http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/courtbuilding.aspx>, accessed 7 June 2015.
8 J Biskupic, ‘Great figures gaze upon the court’, Daily Republican, 11 March 1998, available at <www.dailyrepublican.com/sup_crt_frieze.html>, accessed 7 June 2015.
9 Ibid.
10 T Mauro, ‘The Supreme Court's own commandments', Legal Times, 2 March 2005.
11 See <http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/northandsouthwalls.pdf>, accessed 16 June 2015. See also, eg, al-Alwani, Taha Jabir ‘Fatwa concerning the United States Supreme Court courtroom frieze’, (2000) 15 Journal of Law and Religion 1–28 at 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 See <http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/northandsouthwalls.pdf>, accessed 16 June 2015. See also Biskupic ‘Great figures', who writes that ‘King John signed Magna Carta which elevated the importance of individual rights and the concept of due process – the idea that laws must be administered in the same way for all. Magna Carta eventually inspired American colonists to create a government of fixed laws that would protect people from the caprice of a nation's leaders.’
13 No system can be described as completely secular. See, eg, N Doe, Law and Religion in Europe (Oxford, 2011), especially pp 28–39 for a discussion on French secularism.
14 Eg the presumption of innocence has its roots in canon law.
15 Eg the use of sharia in family law in India, Israel and Lebanon. The twelve northern states of Nigeria have started to apply sharia to Muslims in family law issues, with some proposals that sharia be extended fully, even to criminal law. I would like to thank Professor Richard Joseph from Northwestern University for introducing me to the Nigerian perspective on the use of religious law.
16 Matthew 22:20–21.
17 Romans 13:10.
18 Matthew 22:37–39.
19 Biskupic, ‘Great Figures'.