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This book examines how the nation - and its (fundamental) law - are ´sensed´ by way of various aesthetic forms from the age of revolution up until our age of contested democratic legitimacy. Contemporary democratic legitimacy is tied, among other things, to consent, to representation, to the identity of ruler and ruled, and, of course, to legality and the legal forms through which democracy is structured. This book expands the ways in which we can understand and appreciate democratic legitimacy. If (democratic) communities are "imagined" this book suggests that their "rightfulness" must be "sensed" - analogously to the need for justice not only to be done, but to be seen to be done. This book brings together legal, historical and philosophical perspectives on the representation and iconography of the nation in the European, North American and Australian contexts from contributors in law, political science, history, art history and philosophy.

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Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part I: Revolution, Constitution, Republic.- Chapter 2. Monument, Portrait, Tableau: Making Sense of and With Jacques Louis David´s Tennis Court Oath.- Chapter 3. The Quest for the Decisive Constitutional Moment (DCM).- Chapter 4. Courbet and the Nude Republican Master.- Part II: The Aesthetic Constitution of Office.- Chapter 5. Justice Petrified: The Seat of the Italian Supreme Court between Law, Architecture and Iconography.- Chapter 6. Visual Rhetoric as "a Space-in-between": Semiotic Account of French Official Presidential Photographs.- Part III: Untimely Reflections on the Nation´s Law .- Chapter 7. A Hypothesis on the Genealogy of the Motto "In God We Trust" and the Emergence of the Identity of the Church.-Chapter 8. Here and Now: From "Aestheticizing Politics" to "Politicizing Art".- Part IV: Out of Many, One.- Chapter 9. Appreciation or Appropriation? An Indigenous Moment in the American Numismatic Narrative (1999-2009). Chapter 10. Internormative Gastronomies: Law, Nation and Identity.- Part V: Consensus.- Chapter 11. Aesthetic Mediation: Towards Legitimate Power.

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