Civic
Nebraska State Capitol
Lee Lawrie’s largest commission: a vast sculptural programme integrated into Bertram Goodhue’s Nebraska State Capitol.
Archive article
Nebraska State Capitol
Lincoln, Nebraska
The Nebraska State Capitol is Lee Lawrie’s largest and most sustained architectural commission. Its sculpture forms a complete visual programme across the building, from exterior panels and animal figures to interior rooms and ceremonial spaces.
Alexander’s History of Law, “The Majesty of the Law”
Moses Bringing the Law from Sinai
Deborah Judges Israel
Before the development of monarchies, judges were charismatic Hebrew leaders who reviewed disputes and made decisions.
Before the development of monarchies, judges were charismatic Hebrew leaders who reviewed disputes and made decisions. Deborah was a great judge who encouraged the Hebrews as they sought liberation from the Canaanites’ oppression. The panel shows the prophetess Deborah, sitting under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel, judging Israel. According to Professor Zabel, this panel reinforces the Mosaic covenant, that God’s will protects his chosen people, but only if they obey His law.
The Judgement of Solomon
The third and final Hebrew panel features The Judgment of Solomon, showing us the importance of Wisdom as a guardian of the law.
The third and final Hebrew panel features The Judgment of Solomon, showing us the importance of Wisdom as a guardian of the law. In roughly the tenth century B.C., the Hebrew people were first unified under King Saul. He was succeeded by Kings David and Solomon, who further extended Israel’s control throughout the region. Jerusalem became the capital around this same time.
King Solomon was widely admired for his wisdom and for writing both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. The panel tells the old story of two women who both claimed to be the mother of the same child. To settle the dispute, Solomon ruled for the baby to be cut in half with a sword. The boy’s real mother immediately relinquished her claim and forfeited the baby, rather than seeing it killed. In this act of maternal compassion, her actions to the truth spoke louder than her words, so Solomon determined that she was the baby’s true mother. This panel was completed in the first half of 1934.
Solon giving a new constitution to Athens
This scene celebrates the reforms of the Athenian archon, Solon.
This scene celebrates the reforms of the Athenian archon, Solon. He was elected as the chief archon, during a socio-economic and political crisis during the sixth century B.C. He was given broad powers to enact reforms, bringing the law from a more idealistic state to one that could be administered more practically.
For example, debtors who fell behind in their payments could be enslaved, but under Solon, the practice was outlawed and they were freed. Other reforms he instituted dealt with trade regulations and land ownership, which influenced modern property rights. His reforms also led to the development of coinage as a form of currency.
Solon was instrumental as one of the founding fathers of Democracy. Athens had been dominated by the nobility, namely, the rich. He modified the government with the creation of the ecclesia, or popular assembly, of which all citizens were members and under which people had access to the people’s court, or “heliaea” in Greek. So here is perhaps the birth of the bicameral legislative assembly, consisting of two houses, like the houses of Lords and of Commons that would become the English parliament and later evolve into the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Perhaps Solon’s most important achievement was his contribution to the new Constitution of Athens, which replaced the older, more Draconian set of laws.
Solon Giving a New Constitution to Athens.
The panel shows Solon holding hands with Athena, the Greek goddess of war and protector of cities. She was also known as a goddess of agriculture and of various arts and crafts and is credited with introducing the olive to Greek agriculture and inventing the plow. She is shown together with the newly emancipated slaves who were returning to freedom, prosperity and a more politically stable Athens.
The Publishing of the Twelve Tablets in Rome
From 450 B.C., The Publishing of the Law of the Twelve Tables in Rome shows a Centurion heralding the publication of the Twelve Tables.
From 450 B.C., The Publishing of the Law of the Twelve Tables in Rome shows a Centurion heralding the publication of the Twelve Tables. Common Roman citizens, shown in the characters of a mason with his trowel, a farmer with his sickle and a builder with his plumb bob as they come to inspect the new laws.
The panel represents the first codification of Roman law. The Twelve Tables were laws etched in stone, transforming the law from its previously secretive incarnation and translated into a form that people could easily see and read.
The Twelve Tables addressed civil and criminal law and were stern. They had never before been seen by the people or published. This development helped people obey the law.
The Establishment of the Tribunate of the People
This panel depicts a rather melodramatic scene.
This panel depicts a rather melodramatic scene. The plebeians, or commoners of ancient Rome, had won recognition of an assembly to elect four Tribunes, who served to protect the people against the despotism of the patrician magistrates. The magistrates often abused their power but the Tribune could overrule their decisions. Eventually the Tribunate increased from four to ten men and served to protect citizens from encroachment by the state.
This panel shows Appius Claudius, one of ten Roman magistrates, known as decemviri, and the most hated of them all. He wanted to seize the plebeian girl, Virginia, as his love slave. Her father, Virginius, killed her rather than surrender her to him.
Claudius’s abhorrent behavior and abuse of authority so outraged the public that it caused the plebeian revolution. This, in turn, resulted in the plebes’ establishment of the Tribune to compensate for the power of the decemviri. Completed in November 1934, this panel culminated more than a decade of sculpting on the Capitol.
Plato Writing his Dialogue of the Ideal Republic
Plato Writing his Dialogue of the Ideal Republic.
Plato Writing his Dialogue of the Ideal Republic.
Continuing the procession of the 21 panels making up The History of Law, we see Plato, who pioneered political philosophy.
Continuing the procession of the 21 panels making up The History of Law, we see Plato, who pioneered political philosophy. Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle, both of whom are pictured in his forum. Plato is regarded as a giant among western philosophers. In his book The Republic, Plato discusses justice in an ideal Republic.
In Plato’s Republic, only men with a sufficient understanding between good and evil were capable of governing and providing justice for all. He referred to them as the Philosopher-Kings. At the front of the class we see Socrates seated and listening to the lecture. Plato brought forth the idea that man is a political animal.
Orestes before the Areopagites
Completing the Greek series is Orestes before the Areopagites.
Completing the Greek series is Orestes before the Areopagites. In the ancient play, The Oresteia, by Aeschylus, we see an example of violence begetting more violence in the House of Atreus. Orestes was on trial for killing his mother, Clytemnestra, because she had killed his father, Agamemnon. Back then, punishment for murder was left up to the victim’s family.
Orestes was being tried by the Council of Areopagus, which was the council composed of the city elders of Athens. The Areopagus was split evenly until Athena decided Orestes should be free. Athena then created the Areopagites, which created a court to provide wisdom and leadership and to forever end the concept of blood feuds in justice.
What is symbolic about this is that blood revenge was replaced by enlightenment and the rule of law. In the panel, Athena is depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear and carrying a shield emblazoned with an owl, symbolic of wisdom for the power of the mind. If not for the ideas brought forth in The Oresteia, we might never have developed jury trials.
The Codification of Roman Law Under Justinian
The Codification of Roman Law Under Justinian follows next.
The Codification of Roman Law Under Justinian follows next. In this panel, Justinian and his wife, Theodora, receive the Corpus Juris Civilis from Roman scholars. This series of books was known as the body of Roman law. The emperor Justinian was more Byzantine and Christian than classical Roman and ruled his empire from Constantinople on the Bosporus.
Justinian was famous for reclaiming the Italian peninsula which had fallen to the Germans and for the construction of the sixth-century architectural wonder, the Hagia Sophia (meaning Holy Wisdom).
Justinian also wrote the final chapter in a thousand-year story of Roman legal tradition. In the sixth century A.D., Justinian modernized the law, removing contradictory, repetitious and obsolete language through the creation of the Code of Justinian.
He also commissioned The Digest, or Pandects, commentary, written by the best legal minds of the Roman Empire. These, in turn, became the book, “The Institutes,” and Justinian’s laws were assembled and published in Greek as “The Novels.”
Together, “The Code,” “The Digest,” “The Institutes” and “The Novels” became the body of civil law or the Corpus Juris Civilis, which then became the law of continental Europe and wherever Rome held influence. This work has been recognized as being nearly as influential as the Bible in the development of western law.
The Declaration of Independence
The Magna Carta
No other document in the history of modern law can compare to the magnitude of the Magna Carta, or Great Charter of 1215 A.D.
No other document in the history of modern law can compare to the magnitude of the Magna Carta, or Great Charter of 1215 A.D. But it didn’t just happen. The Magna Carta was a feudal contract imposed upon King John of England by those he governed. His vassals viewed him as a tyrant. The Charter imposed many critical obligations upon him and it is regarded as the basis of modern government in Western Europe.
Carving of the three pierced panels above the south entrance was completed by July 1924.
Although the Magna Carta was intended to ensure the rights of nobles rather than the commoners, it helped to lay the foundations for American Law. Some of its most important principles included: no taxation without representation; justice could not be sold, denied or delayed; no person should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. It also established the procedure whereby the lord who broke the feudal contract could legally be faced with rebellion. Most importantly, it established that no one, including the King, was above the Law.
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, which has several various definitions for the multiple meanings of the term for the writ of “Habeas Corpus,” perhaps the simplest is this: “An independent proceeding instituted to determine whether a defendant is being unlawfully deprived of his or her liberty.”
This sacred, time-honored concept has been a central tenet of western law for nearly 800 years. Under this doctrine, every defendant is entitled to due process of law. In modern law, due process includes the right to confront one’s accusers, to know the charges against him, and to have access to the evidence that is to be presented against him. Most modern legal scholars attribute the birth of habeas corpus to the Magna Carta.
The Drafting of the United States Constitution
The Codification of Anglo-Saxon Law under Ethelbert
From the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D.
From the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D. the Roman Empire was invaded by Germanic tribes known as the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, all of whom established small kingdoms across England. Ethelbert was the King of Canton, 562-616.
In 597, Ethelbert converted to Christianity under the Christian missionary Augustine and soon Christianity spread throughout Britain. Eventually, Ethelbert issued a code of Anglo-Saxon laws. Written entirely in German, this was the first written codification of law in northern Europe.
Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury and may have played a role in the creation of the code, as it contained protection of Christianity and sought to limit the intertribal warfare that was prominent in this medieval era. An article in the Sunday Lincoln Journal Star of February 4, 1932 noted that Ethelbert’s code was the oldest known document written in the English language.
Milton Defending Free Speech before Cromwell
The next two panels on the east side feature John Milton defending free speech and the rights of the colonists before Parliament.
The next two panels on the east side feature John Milton defending free speech and the rights of the colonists before Parliament. Milton, who had lived through the English Civil War and was familiar with governmental censorship, is best known as the author of Paradise Lost.
He argued that the press should be free and that in a democracy, informed people are capable of choosing truth over error. The Ethelbert and Milton panels were completed in 1928, according to the Sunday Lincoln Journal Star of February 4, 1932.
Burke Defending America in Parliament
In this panel, Irish statesman Edmund Burke is shown arguing against the Coercive Acts imposed by Britain upon the American Colonies in 1774.
In this panel, Irish statesman Edmund Burke is shown arguing against the Coercive Acts imposed by Britain upon the American Colonies in 1774.
The American Colonists referred to the acts as the “Intolerable Acts.” They would generate the friction that led to the first Continental Congress, which adopted the declaration of rights and grievances.
On March 22, 1775, Burke tried to persuade the House of Commons to repeal these acts aimed at the American Colonies, noting that they were being taxed without representation. He also argued the colonies were too remote to govern effectively and that the colonies were already contributing substantially to the crown.
He went on to say that the colonists were devoted to liberty and English ideals, and enacting English principles in oppressing them was a threat to the British liberties themselves.
Las Casas Pleading the Cause of the Indians
Five hundred years before La Raza Unida, a 1960s farmworkers’ political movement led by César Chávez, a missionary named Bartolomé de las Casas was perhaps the first fighting young priest in the history of civil rights.
Five hundred years before La Raza Unida, a 1960s farmworkers’ political movement led by César Chávez, a missionary named Bartolomé de las Casas was perhaps the first fighting young priest in the history of civil rights. The Spaniards owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean called encomiendas, and were oppressing the natives into slavery to work on them. Las Casas argued that the natives should have the same rights as Spanish citizens.
In the panel, he is shown as he pleads for their rights before Charles V, the Spanish King and Holy Roman Emperor, and his queen. In 1542, the encomiendas that he argued against were outlawed by what became known as the New Laws. While unenforceable, these were among the first civil rights laws passed in the New World.
The Signing of the Pilgrim Compact on the Mayflower
The second of these three panels is The Signing of the Pilgrim Compact on the Mayflower.
The second of these three panels is The Signing of the Pilgrim Compact on the Mayflower. During the winter of 1620, a group of English Separatists, known to us as the Pilgrims, were headed for Virginia, but through mistakes in navigation, ended up much further north along the formidable coast of New England.
If being hundreds of miles off their destination wasn’t bad enough, matters were made even worse because they didn’t have proper permissions to land there. Fearing chaos and mutiny, they drew up a pact pledging loyalty to the colony and signed it aboard their ship, the Mayflower.
In the Compact, they agreed to unite to form a civil body politic, adhering to the will of the colony. The adult males on board signed it before leaving the ship. This was the first law to be signed by Colonial Americans, and is a significant precursor to the Declaration of Independence.
The Emancipation Proclamation
In the next panel, Abraham Lincoln is shown proclaiming the emancipation of the slaves in 1863.
In the next panel, Abraham Lincoln is shown proclaiming the emancipation of the slaves in 1863. We see Lincoln addressing an audience of newly freed slaves, with their chains still dangling from their wrists. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Attorney General Edward Bates stand behind Lincoln. (In the 1920s, the term “negroes” was in the common vernacular, used by both black and white Americans.)
The Purchase of Louisiana From Napoleon
In 1803, the United States bought a parcel of land consisting of roughly 800,000 square miles stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border for fifteen million dollars, doubling the land area of United States.
In 1803, the United States bought a parcel of land consisting of roughly 800,000 square miles stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border for fifteen million dollars, doubling the land area of United States. Negotiations for the land were begun by Thomas Jefferson and conducted with Talleyrand and Barbe Marbois. At this time, Napoleon’s empire was collapsing and he needed the money, so American diplomats Robert Livingston and James Monroe took advantage of his situation and got a great deal on the land.
The Louisiana Purchase included land extending from Louisiana and Texas north to the Canadian border, and from Montana east to Minnesota, a land area that became the central third of the nation. Nebraska was a part of this land area. With the purchase of land also came the adoption of the French law, the Napoleonic code, which has influenced civil law in the states up through the present.
The Kansas Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 passed and allowed these states to decide the question of whether they would permit slavery within their borders, and repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 passed and allowed these states to decide the question of whether they would permit slavery within their borders, and repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
This panel depicts the heated debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and includes Senator Charles E. Steward, Asbury Dickens, and William H. Seward, Secretary of State. The panel was completed January, 1931.
Stephen A. Douglas, known as the “Little Giant,” is the figure in the center and to his left is President Franklin Pierce, standing with the bill’s opponent, Charles Sumner. Also pictured are Andrew P. Butler, James Mason, Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin F. Wade.
The Admission of Nebraska as a State in the Union
The 21st and final panel in the History of Law series concludes with Nebraska’s Statehood when it was admitted into the Union.
The 21st and final panel in the History of Law series concludes with Nebraska’s Statehood when it was admitted into the Union. In the territorial days, there had been three attempts to write a state constitution; of which efforts in 1860 and 1864 had both failed. A third attempt in 1866 was drafted, but only narrowly approved by a popular vote. Unfortunately, it contained a provision that limited voting rights only to free white males. Congress objected and the provision was stricken. Statehood for Nebraska became a reality on March 1, 1867.
In the panel, we see the female figure of Columbia, representing the nation, seated in a chair adorned with an American Eagle and wearing a stylized Phrygian, or liberty cap. The nation’s Capitol building is in the background. In her hand, she holds the papers of statehood and receives our star of statehood from a Civil War veteran. He stands next to a pioneer woman, shown wearing a farm woman’s bonnet with a buffalo robe draped around her shoulder, representing the Territory of Nebraska. In her left arm, she holds a scepter made from corn. Early newspaper accounts about the panel described the woman as Miss Nebraska.
Behind her are soldiers of both the North and South, returning home from the war to start a new life. Nebraska entered the Union barely two years after the end of the Civil War, so it was a land that welcomed these veterans. They could live here, and start over, looking forward to the future, rather than living in the past. One veteran has a canteen and holds a bag of seeds while behind him is an older farmer with his plow. These veterans who settled the state were like most veterans of any war; ready to look forward to the promise of the future in a new land, instead of toward the hostilities of the past.
Maps of the Nebraska Territory dating to 1854, show land that extended from Kansas to the Canadian border, and as far west as present-day Idaho. If the original territory had become a state, it would have been comparable in size to the state of Texas.
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Nebraska State Capitol · Lincoln, Nebraska
Looking North
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