License Plates: Personalized Jurisdiction and Performativity of Rights

Abstract

Whether personal or political, license plates represent a variety of social, cultural, and legal identities. As an enlivened legal semiotic in everyday life, license plates represent the performativity of rights in which the crafting of these legal emblems depends upon the reception of a viewing audience, namely other drivers and law enforcement. License plates mirror what’s debated in American society. In jurisdictional contests involving expressions of speech and assertions of indigenous sovereignty, the license plate richly characterizes the constitutive approach to law as it transpires on roadways across the United States and particularly in Hawai‘i.¹