Shaffer Coat Of Arms
Graeme D. Orr (University of Queensland Law School) has posted A Fetishised Gift: The Legal Status of Flags (Griffith Law Review, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 504-526, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Accounts of the relationship between flags and the law have focused on a narrow strain of contentions drawn from debates about political expression. This essay seeks to bridge the gap between cultural studiesʼ insight into nationalism and its symbolics, and the flagʼs legal status, to better understand the unique position occupied by national flags. In doing so it draws particularly on United States, Australian and New Zealand law and practice. Flag ʻwavingʼ has become more prevalent in many liberal democracies. In such societies, flags occupy not a religious role, but a quiet and quotidian place in what Billig terms ʻbanal nationalismʼ. As a cipher for the whole, a particular flagʼs design is relatively unimportant; what lends it power is a mix of the gravity bestowed by its official...
