ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the characteristics attached to the legal totem(s), and its, or their, quantitative and qualitative differences. It considers the idea of ritual(s) and its (their) links with law and justice. Understandably, if justice is both considered as a set of universal phenomena and also as an asymmetrical concept which depends on socio-cultural context, a specific space and time consists in a universal ritual or particular rituals. The chapter provides a preliminary comment on the judge and the legal event in Western legal traditions. The position of the judge depends on the horror of the patricide: the members of the totem cannot kill the totem. The particular totem, the legal totem, must be considered through the Oedipus complex, which evolves around the well-known triangular relationship between a child, the father and the mother. King Oedipus was both the incestuous rival of his father, and his murderer.
