Our Logo
"Divide et impera must be the motto of every nation, that either hates or fears us."
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #7
Our logo derives from Karl Bitter’s bronze sculpture of Alexander Hamilton. He sits in a Klismos chair across from Bitter’s sculpture of Thomas Jefferson at the southern entrance to the Old Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. Bitter (1867-1915) studied fine arts in Austria before emigrating to the United States in 1889. He completed the six-foot Hamilton sculpture in 1911. Hamilton holds a book in his left hand and a staff in his right hand.
The courthouse is renowned for its visual representation of the development of the rule of law within the Western tradition. Marble statues of Stephen Langston, Simon de Montfort, King Edward I, John Hampden, John Lord Somers, and the Earl of Mansfield (William Murray), decorate the cornice above the Hamilton and Jefferson sculptures. Statues of Moses, Emperor Justinian, King Alfred the Great, and Pope Gregory IX decorate the cornice on the northside of the courthouse. The inscription on the northside cornice—“Obedience to the law is liberty”—attributed to the Roman philosopher Boethius, suggests the paradox of civil liberty, that the sacrifice of some measure of individual freedom is essential to the enjoyment of any meaningful, morally regulated freedom.
