In our everyday lives, we experience law as a system of signs. Representations of legality are visually manifested in the materiality of things we see and spatially experience.

Methodologically, aesthetic texts of legality semiotically emerge as examples of visual jurisprudence, and illustrate the constitutive waltz between social governance, formal law, and materiality. In the spirit of the rhizome from Deleuze and Guattari, the visual chaos of the Banyan tree reminds us of the variety of a root system revealing facets of (de)territorialization.

“We are only just beginning to disentangle a few of the threads, which are still so unknown to us that we immediately assume them to be either marvelously new or absolutely archaic, whereas for two hundred years (not less, yet not much more) they have constituted the dark, but firm web of our experience” (Foucault 1973)

With aerial roots that mature into multiple trunks of the tree, the Banyan has abundant root-trunks perpetually growing during its lifetime. It has keenly adapted to environmental conditions insofar as roots, sprouting without the cover of soil, are visibly tumultous and unruly. Tentacular in appearance, the Banyan is rich in complex materiality and function. Yet, in seeing the Banyan, we can see beyond the tree to metaphorically envision the evolving development of the relationship of law and visual jurisprudence as a relationship equally disorganized and spontaneous.

Legal semiotics received the status it has today during the last decades of the 20th century at Penn State University Berk Campus, where Roberta Kevelson established the Penn State Center for Semiotic Research in Law, Government and Politics. She was deeply involved in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and laid the foundations for legal semiotics in the US and abroad with many publications on the subject. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, meanings and other complexities. Emphasis is on the sign, which forms the nucleus of semiosis with the ancient Greek notion of seme (= sign) as the central component in its name. Names, concepts and other forms of expression are altogether a sign, and signs in signs form a core concept of each process of meaning formation. A sign is something that relates to something else for someone in some respect or capacity.

Where and what is the 'something' and the 'else'? Lawyers, jurilinguists and legal semioticians are challenged to answer the question in all sorts of cases, so they could use some assistance to fulfill their task of clarification in social life.

"...the greatest thing about semiotics is the recognition that we communicate not in a hierarchical fashion where an authority speaks downward but in a dialogic fashion among people who create a universe hat is not finished, but open. What we take as law or a fixed judgment is always provisional. We are open to the world; the self is a dynamic sign in play that continually creates something genuinely new. Semiotics can keep freedom alive—it is experimental and anti-authoritarian; it is never under anyone's control; there are no masters or slaves, only equals in relationships". (R. Kevelson 1996).

[…] we should remember that it is the ‘inter’ – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between, the space of the entre that Derrida has opened up in writing itself – that carries the burden of the meaning of culture. […] It is in this space that we will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by exploring this hybridity, this ‘Third Space’, we may elude the politics of polarity and merge as the others of our selves. (Bhabha 1995)

Communication means transferring information from one culture to another. This transfer of information leads to the conceptualization of a common and significant framework in legal discourse, especially in the translation, interpretation, and communication fields. Likewise, there is an increasing development and diversification of domain-specific knowledge across nations and cultures. As a consequence, legal specialists in different subfields act as language and culture mediators to convey the correct contents of utterances and/or speech acts among their communities or for their clients. Active and collaborative work is then necessary to mediate, decide, and analyze under real constraints with cultural challenges.

Decision-making needs to elaborate multiple and viable solutions to problems that emerge naturally from ordinary language, and so to have “culture mediation” in the legal field. This combination of function-, process-, and solution- approaches to language and culture mediation is proven complex in both the process and the outcome.

* 2022-2025 - Anne Wagner - Porteur officiel du projet - with 3 researchers from Italy, Canada and USA -  "Combating Gender-Based Violence", prospective publications in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law and in the Law Book Series "Gender, Justice and Legal Feminism" - Springer.

* 2021-2023 Anne Wagner - Porteur officiel du projet - "Cyber Hate, the Modern Cyber Evil" (2 research partners: CRDP équipe René Demogue, Hawai'i Hilo University, 2 research seminars, international conferences and 1 reference book under way: estimated contributors: 45). HANDBOOK ON CYBER HATE, THE MODERN CYBER-EVIL, SPRINGER.

* 2021 - 2023. Anne Wagner - Porteur officiel du projet - General Editor: “Legal Semiotics and Visual Law” (2 research partners: CRDP équipe René Demogue, Hawai'i Hilo University, research seminars, 2 international conferences and 1 reference book - RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON LEGAL SEMIOTICS - Edward Elgar Publishing.

* 2021-2023: Anne Wagner, Porteur officiel du project - General Editor "Jurilinguistics" (2 research partners - CRDP, Équipe René Demogue, Lille University, France and Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland) 35 Chapters, 2 international conferences - 1 reference book: RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON JURILINGUISTICS - Edward Elgar Publishing.

* 2020 - 2023: Anne Wagner, Porteur officiel du projet "COVID-19 INFODEMIC – BETWEEN LAW, ETHICS AND FAKE NEWS". - CRDP, équipe René Demogue (3 partenaires officiels - CRDP équipe René Demogue, Lille University - France, Hawai'i Hilo University - USA, and Adam Mickiewicz University - Poland: participants: 45, 1 Special Issue of 19 papers in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law).

* 2020 - 2022: Anne Wagner, Porteur officiel du projet "Legal Translation as a 'Third Space', and Instrumentalization of Law as a Socially Constituted Sign-System". - CRDP, équipe René Demogue (3 partenaires officiels - CRDP équipe René Demogue, Lille University - France, Hawai'i Hilo University - USA, and Adam Mickiewicz University - Poland: participants: 45, 2 scheduled zoom- conferences, 3 Special Issues: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (1 Special Issue), Comparative Legilinguistics (2 Special Issues)

* 2018 - 2021. Anne Wagner Porteur officiel du Projet « Flag, Identity, Memory : Critiquing the Public Narrative through Color » - CRDP, équipe René Demogue (4 official partners : Hawai'i Hilo University - China University of Political Science and Law - CRDP – équipe René Demogue : Lille University - Jia Tong University, Shanghai - 75 participating countries: 2 international conferences, 4 research webinars, 1 reference volume with Springer: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8).

* 2018 - 2020: Anne Wagner, Porteur officiel du projet « Emojis, Visual Jurisprudence, and Law » - CRDP, équipe René Demogue (2 official partners - Hawai'i Hilo University and CRDP équipe René Demogue, Lille University: 15 participants: 4 research seminars, 1 international publication with a Special Issue).

* 2017 - 2021. Anne Wagner – Porteur officiel du Projet «Comparative Legal Semiotics » (4 partenaires : Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland - China University of Political Science and Law - CRDP – équipe René Demogue : Lille University - Jia Tong University, Shanghai - 35 pays participants)

* 2017-2019: The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education – STINT – Initiation Grant: IB 2018-7596 (26 649 SEK) – Research: “E-Discourse and the Dynamics of Violence, Gender Discrimination and Abuse as a Dominant Discourse: Communicating through Rumours and Visual Images” (3 research members: Örebro University, Sweden - CRDP équipe René Demogue - Hawai'i Hilo University: 3 research seminars, Visiting Research Fellow at Örebro University, Sweden).

* 2015 - 2019. Anne Wagner – Porteur officiel du projet de recherche « Cities as ill bodies in Films and Series » (2 official partners : CRDP, équipe René Demogue et Zhejiang University - 2 international conferences, 2 international publications, 1 research exchange)

* 2013 - 2017. Anne Wagner - Porteur officiel du Projet « Signs, Symbols and Meanings in Law » - Zhejiang Police College – Jia Tong University - Shanghai – Lille CRDP, équipe René Demogue (3 official partners, 15 participation countries, 3 publications, 3 conferences, 5 research seminars)

* 2007 - 2015. Anne Wagner - Collaborateur principal pour la France, International Research Grant Council (RGC), Hong Kong SAR Competitive Earmarked Research Grant (CERG) funded research project on "International Commercial Arbitration Practices: A Discourse Analytical Study" (15 research partners, 4 publications, 1 Research Exchange, 1 international conference)

* 1 - 4 avril 2011: Exploratory workshop "Visual Communication in Contemporary European Societies. Shaping Identities, Citizenship, Communities, Inclusion Strategies" in Bologna (Italy), and funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF): Porteur du projet Dr. Ira Torresi, 25 participants.