ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a general overview of historically determined socio-legal contexts, basic patterns and recurrent appraisals of a thousand-years-old metaphor: Justice-as-a-Woman. It uses the ancient metaphorical model as an analytical frame of reference to enlighten its uninterrupted re-appraisal in the course of most relevant historical stages of Western civilizations. The chapter then outlines the image of Justice-as-Woman not only as recurrent leitmotif in the long history of legal theory and practice, but also as a still pertinent conceptual tool to critically understand the contemporary interplay between law and society. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century in England the main focus as regards legal and constitutional issues was oriented towards solving the mismatch between the original male and female, civil and common, normative technicalities of Common Law. The core issue of Bachofen's Mutterrecht is explicitly epitomized by the title - highlighting that women, in ancient times, assessed and ran a proper feminine legal system.
