Do you suggest all paths start with ['root', ...] ? That would just add complexity I think.

The empty list maps pretty closely to a path with zero steps. The JSON Pointer to the root is the empty string.

When an URI is used with the JSON Pointer as the URI fragment is used (the stuff after the hash), such as in "$ref", the URI typically looks like this: "urn:uuid:74b843b5-3aa4-44e9-b7bc-f555936fa823#" or as a relative URI just "#" to refer to the same JSON document.