From Jonah Jones: An Artist’s Life (Peter Jones. Seren Books 2011), pp 124–125:
“In 1968–69 Jonah carried out a new kind of commission, a large wall sculpture in blue slate and white marble for the Mold Law Courts. It was far more abstract than any public project in stone he had executed up to this point. The work consists of two separate pieces, named Justice and Mercy. The first is based on an upturned shield in slate (surely a reference to the traditional Celtic sign of peace made by an approaching armed force, as mentioned in the second branch of the Mabinogi). Rays of marble, like light shining forth, splay upward and out from the lowest edge of the shield, below which extends the hilt of a sword; its tip protrudes above the point of the shield. The whole piece is surmounted by a flat crown-like shape in slate and marble, a kind of echo of Bryn Cader Faner, the chieftain’s tomb in the Ardudwy hills.
Mercy, by contrast, is based on explicitly Christian symbols. Above a hard-edged crown of thorns stand three superimposed crosses from which radiate four shafts of slate; between these and the crown of thorns hover a circle of white wing shapes, like doves of peace. Plaques below each piece carry the following texts:
Justice – Impartial, balanced, imperturbable and unbending. The sword and shield are crowned by the scales and superimposed by the twelve of the jury.
Mercy – The tears of Christ and the twelve members of the jury stoop towards the human family and the thorns of pain and punishment fall away before the intercession.
Justice and Mercy are strong, effective work, Jonah at his best.”
As we reported on April 3, 2010, the law courts were completely refurbished and reopened in 2010, when the walls on which the sculptures are mounted were returned to their original duck-egg blue.