13 November 2023 University of Warwick | OC1.06 (Oculus building) | 6 -8 pm

How did a blindfolded and ambidextrous lady, holding scales and a sword, become the ubiquitous representation of justice? This event is an opportunity to discuss current debates about judicial symbolism and the iconographic tradition of Lady Justice.

Author Valérie Hayaert will chair a panel, featuring Carey Young and Vicky McCloud.

Carey Young

Carey Young is a visual artist, an Associate Professor in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Law, Birkbeck. For over twenty years her artistic work has used video, photography, performance, text and installation to address and critique the field of law. Recently, she created films and photographic series within courthouses, and featuring female judges, in order to examine the interrelationships of law, gender and power. She has collaborated with lawyers and legal theorists to create bespoke legal instruments that are also artistic works, and which explore law’s relations to the fictional, performative and material. These works have explored legal specialisms including IP, contracts, land law, outer space law and human rights, as well as examining specific cases. Young’s works are held in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Tate and Dallas Museum of Art, amongst others and have been exhibited widely, including at Modern Art Oxford, Tate Britain, the Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, The Power Plant (Toronto), the New Museum (New York) and MoMA PS1 (New York).

Check out her websiteLink opens in a new window.

Vicky McCloud

Master Victoria McCloud

Dr Victoria McCloud is the second woman and youngest person to hold the position of Master, which is a category of judge in the High Court of England and Wales. She was also the first trans person to practice as a barrister and the first to be appointed as a judge part-time in 2006, and later full-time in 2010. She is one of a small number of nominated national Whistleblowing judges appointed by the Lord Chief Justice to help judges address concerns they may have about any wrongdoing in the justice system. In 2020 she was named one of the Sunday Times’ ’50 Women of the Year’.