Mythology and characterization of the Judiciary:

Judge Hercules meets Judge Penelope

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2026/91800

This article starts from the construction of Judge Hercules in Ronald Dworkin’s legal theory to propose a new mythological character as a possible basis for characterizing the Judiciary in contemporary democracies: Penelope, the weaver wife of Ulysses in the Odyssey. The activity of endless sewing and unstitching to which this character dedicated herself as a way of dealing with the harassment of new suitors without abandoning her fidelity to her missing former husband is then evoked to characterize how judges react to the harassment of the parties by weaving a coherent legal discourse, but always incomplete due to its link to a promise that cannot be abandoned. If, in the case of Penelope, this promise was the return of Ulysses to Ithaca, its reflection in the Judiciary translates this commitment into the notion of a “justice to come.”