Decoding Images

The law’s a wordy thing, but from time to time it resorts to images to get its point across, as we’ve pointed out occasionally here on Slaw. The idea is, most often, that an image or a graphic representation can be taken in all at once — as a gestalt — which is assumed to happen more quickly than the decoding that takes place as we move (leaping, it turns out) through a text from left to right. This is one reason graphic laws find themselves on traffic signs.

But what seems obvious to one observer — the “draftsperson,” say — might not be so obvious to another, screwing up the quick decoding process and sowing confusion. Here’s a nice, gentle example of that graphical ambiguity from the cartoonist xkcd. It’s an animated GIF; but because they can be annoying to some, I’ve fixed it so that you have to click on the static image below to see the animation.

There are more (traditionally) serious sides to this decoding of signs and graphics than the negotiation of intersections. If that sort of thing interests you, take a look at read the article “Worth a Thousand Words” by Rebecca Tushnet [Harvard Law Review 125 (2012): 684-759]. She’s mostly concerned with the unsophisticated way in which courts “read” images; but during the course of her argument she explores what’s vexed about determining the meaning of images, which is interesting in a number of respects.