According to this PDF from the court, the "Wisdom" sculpture is "an old man." It doesn't say it's Moses. Just some old guy. But the "Force" sculpture, we're told "is a composite of General Ulysses S. Grant, General Nelson A. Miles, and Admiral Francis M. Bunce." Actually, there is a Moses statue elsewhere on the building, at the roof line:
There are various other historical figures, like Zoroaster and Confucius, and I see in the PDF that Muhammad was one of them until his image was removed and destroyed back in 1955, at the request of the governments of Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
Be that as it may, it's the inscriptions that fascinate me. I think that these are original aphorisms, composed for these sculptures, and that they were intended to paraphrase widely understood propositions of American law. Nevertheless, the precise words, taken literally, are quite extreme. I was surprised to see them on the courthouse. How differently cases would come out if these 2 phrases were binding law, taken seriously?
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