Effect and Technique in Legal Aesthetics

Abstract

Discussions of legal aesthetics often proceed as if it were sufficient, in exploring law’s aesthetic dimensions, to refer to effects such as symmetry, balance, and proportionality. Those effects, however, might be produced by any number of techniques, and aesthetic technique tells us more about the meaning and context of legal ideas than effects do. After discussing various kinds of inquiry into legal aesthetics, this essay turns to Blackstone’s Commentaries as a source for the techniques that inform modern legal writing and analysis.