Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek, is a comprehensive and thought-provoking work that explores the complex role of visual symbols—particularly flags and colors—in shaping legal, cultural, and political narratives.
This edited volume spans various disciplines, including law, semiotics, visual culture, and political theory, bringing together scholars from across the globe to reflect on how symbols, particularly flags, become crucial tools for conveying identity, memory, and authority. It offers timely insights in an era where symbols are increasingly central to political and social conflicts around the world.
The volume explores how the strategic use of color in flags helps shape collective identities, especially in the context of nation-building and political movements.
The volume builds on previous discussions initiated during the 2018 Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative Through Color conference at Lille University, organized by Anne Wagner. It further echoes themes explored in Anne Wagner and Malik Bozzo-Rey’s analysis of French commemorative postage stamps in Chapter 15 of Law, Culture, and Visual Studies. This earlier work examined how symbols like stamps function as carriers of national memory and identity within legal contexts, much like flags, which serve as both representations of national history and powerful semiotic devices in legal frameworks.
The Role of Semiotics in Visual Jurisprudence
A central theme throughout the book is semiotics, which studies how signs and symbols create meaning. In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative, flags are examined as semiotic tools that convey complex legal, cultural, and political meanings. The foreword by Larry Catá Backer sets the tone for the volume, discussing the Confederate flag as a contested symbol.
Backer emphasizes how flags operate on dual levels: they are symbols of heritage and identity, but they can also perpetuate division and exclusion (Backer, p. xv). The Confederate flag, for example, represents pride for some groups in the U.S. South, while others view it as a symbol of oppression and slavery. Backer’s analysis highlights how flags often embody competing narratives, each invested with legal and cultural meaning.
This dual nature of flags is central to visual jurisprudence—the idea that visual symbols like flags function as legal texts that communicate values, norms, and identities (Broekman, pp. 3-28). The contributors to this volume explore how flags function as shorthand for larger legal and social discourses, distilling complex concepts like nationhood, authority, and sovereignty into easily recognizable visual symbols. The volume builds on this semiotic framework to explore the role of flags in constructing, preserving, and challenging legal and cultural authority (Leone, pp.53-63).
Throughout the volume, flags are shown to be highly contested symbols.
For example, in post-Soviet states, flags were not just markers of new national identities but also visual declarations of independence and sovereignty. Yulia Erokhina and Anita Soboleva’s chapter analyzes how newly independent nations in the former Soviet Union adopted bold, bright colors in their flags to assert their distinct national identities (Erokhina and Soboleva, p. 333-351).
Their work shows how these flags acted as semiotic ruptures from the past, signaling a break from Soviet rule and a move towards a new national consciousness. This reinforces the idea that flags, as semiotic devices, are deeply political tools, encoding the values and aspirations of a nation while also serving as visual texts that project legal and political authority.
The semiotic analysis is not limited to flags alone. Chapter 15 by Anne Wagner and Malik Bozzo-Rey also addresses semiotic analysis in the context of French commemorative postage stamps. Just as flags function as symbols of national identity and authority, postage stamps—small and often overlooked—condense legal, historical, and cultural meanings into symbolic forms. In their analysis, Wagner and Bozzo-Rey demonstrate how the visual design of French stamps serves to reinforce narratives of French legal history and state authority, echoing the way flags operate on a larger scale (Wagner and Bozzo-Rey, Chapter 15).
Color and Identity
Another major theme of Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative is the symbolic use of color in conveying identity, values, and ideologies. Color plays a pivotal role in the way flags communicate messages of belonging and exclusion, national pride, and political identity.
The contributors of the volume explore how the strategic use of color in flags helps shape collective identities, especially in the context of nation-building and political movements.
Color in flags serves as a marker of social and political movements.
Colors are politically charged elements that help shape legal and social identities.
Renée Ann Cramer’s chapter on the LGBTQ+ pride flag shows how the use of rainbow colors in the flag represents the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community and its struggle for legal recognition and rights (Cramer, p. 223). The pride flag, with its distinctive rainbow design, has become a powerful symbol of inclusion, solidarity, and resistance. Through the use of color, the LGBTQ+ pride flag transcends borders, uniting global movements for equality while challenging heteronormative legal structures.
Colors, therefore, are not merely aesthetic choices in flags; they are politically charged elements that help shape legal and social identities. From post-Soviet nation-building to LGBTQ+ rights, the contributors to this volume show how color is used to communicate identity, authority, and political values in both national and global contexts. 2.1. Flags as Contested Symbols
Flags as Contested Symbols
Flags are often the sites of deep contestation, serving as symbols of unity for some and exclusion for others. Throughout the volume, flags are shown to be highly contested symbols (Hu, pp. 103-121), their meanings shifting depending on the political and cultural context in which they are used (Lee-Niinioja, pp. 123-143). This theme is especially pertinent in contexts where national or political symbols have become embroiled in legal disputes (Sadowski, pp. 85-101).
One of the most powerful examples of contested symbolism in the book is the discussion of the Confederate flag in the United States. As Larry Catá Backer points out in the foreword, the Confederate flag is a deeply polarizing symbol in the U.S. It is viewed by some as a symbol of Southern pride and heritage, but for others, it represents a legacy of slavery, racism, and exclusion (Backer, p. xv).
The display of the Confederate flag in public spaces has been the subject of numerous legal battles, and its contested nature highlights the deep divisions in American society over race, memory, and identity. Backer’s analysis underscores how flags, far from being neutral symbols, are often battlegrounds for political and legal disputes.
Similarly, flags in protest movements are shown to take on new meanings as symbols of resistance and defiance. The volume highlights the use of flags in movements like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, where protesters used the national flag as a symbol of resistance against state corruption and Russian interference. In this context, the national flag became more than just a symbol of the state—it was appropriated by the people as a tool of protest and a demand for legal and political reform. The reappropriation of flags in protest movements underscores the dynamic nature of these symbols and their capacity to be reinterpreted in different political and legal contexts.
In many cases, the legal status of flags becomes central to these conflicts. Legal disputes over the display of certain flags—such as the Confederate flag in public buildings or the national flags of contested regions—highlight how symbols can become flashpoints for legal and political struggles. The volume demonstrates that flags are not merely passive representations of national identity; they are active agents in the construction and contestation of legal authority.
Flags as Memory
The role of flags in preserving and transmitting collective memory is another key focus of this volume. Flags, as visual symbols, often serve as repositories of historical narratives, embodying the memory of wars, revolutions, and national struggles. The contributors explore how flags function as vehicles for memory, linking past events to contemporary legal and political identities.
In his analysis of the Scottish Saltire, James MacLean explores how this ancient national flag has come to symbolize Scottish independence and pride over centuries (MacLean, p. 267). The Saltire, one of the oldest national flags in the world, has become more than a symbol of Scotland—it embodies the memory of Scotland’s historical struggles for autonomy and self-determination. The flag’s long history is intertwined with Scotland’s legal and political identity, making it a powerful symbol of both the past and the future.
Similarly, flags that commemorate historical events, such as the Japanese Rising Sun flag, serve as symbols of national memory (Richard Powell, pp. 353-383). In Japan, the Rising Sun flag has undergone multiple transformations, moving from a symbol of imperial conquest to a contested emblem of national pride in the post-war period. This shifting meaning highlights how flags act as carriers of historical narratives, continually reshaped by the events and legal contexts that surround them.
Critical Reflections and Conclusion
Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative is an intellectually stimulating volume that offers a multifaceted exploration of how visual symbols operate within legal and cultural frameworks. Its interdisciplinary approach, drawing on legal studies, political science, sociology, and semiotics, provides a comprehensive analysis of how flags and colors function as powerful semiotic tools in the construction of identity, authority, and memory.
As Kieran Tranter (Queensland University of Technology) notes in his endorsement, the volume offers a “kaleidoscopic contribution” to the burgeoning field of visual jurisprudence, revealing how flags and colors represent those who claim them, while also shaping legal and public narratives. Similarly, Christina Spiesel (Yale Law School) commends the editors for assembling a crucial conversation that resists simplistic explanations of how flags and colors function in legal contexts, being like “mini-texts that a nation espouses” (Marcel Danesi, University of Toronto).
Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek have curated a collection that challenges readers to reflect on the semiotic power of flags and colors, making it a valuable contribution to the study of visual jurisprudence, semiotics, and cultural memory. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of law, identity, and visual culture, offering fresh insights into how symbols shape the legal and political landscapes in which we live.
