Law and Emotions

This article is intended as a systematic, quantitative study of the occurrence of
emotion-related terms in the discourse of Polish case law on personal injury. My
purpose is to show the scale (prevalence) and range (variety) of references to
terms related to feelings and affect in the decisions of Polish courts, and to
compare this data with rudimentary psychological nomenclature. I am interested
not only in how often Polish courts refer to affective phenomena in general, but
also how they distinguish various kinds of emotions and, to some extent, what
role they assign to them in their reasoning about personal injury. This data is
placed in the context of basic psychological models. This is supplemented by
preliminary remarks on what roles most notable emotions fulfill, aiming at
creating a rudimentary taxonomy of emotions in Polish case law on personal
injury. In this way the study aims to answer the questions whether Polish courts
notice emotions while adjudicating on non-pecuniary harm, what range of
emotions they refer to, and how this data shows the perceived function of affect-
related terms in case law. In short, the aim of this article may be described as
drawing up a tentative “map” of the affective legal terrain, as well as a taxonomy
of functions that emotions may play in personal injury law.

Judges are required to suppress and manage their own emotions as well as those of other court users and staff in their everyday work. Previous studies have examined the complex emotional labour undertaken by judges, but there is limited research on the emotion management performed by judges in their interactions with jurors. Drawing on a qualitative study of judge-jury relations in criminal trials in Ireland, we illustrate how judges learn and habituate emotional labour practices through informal and indirect processes. Judges described managing their emotions to demonstrate impartiality and objectivity. Their accounts also underline the importance of balancing presentations of neutrality with empathy, as well as being mindful of the potential emotional toll of jury service on jurors.

In "Heart Versus Head," Rachlinski, Guthrie, and Wistrich present experimental findings suggesting that judges sometimes rule on the basis of emotion rather than reason. Though there is much of value in their findings, they have presented a false choice. The experiments do offer strong evidence that judges' decisions can be influenced by the "affect heuristic," insofar as they show that prompting generalized feelings of good/bad and like/dislike can sway legal rulings that ought to be answered entirely on traditionally legalistic grounds. However, the experiments do not speak more broadly to the influence of judicial emotion, which is a far more complex phenomenon than the affect heuristic.

Generations of lawyers have been taught that thinking like a lawyer requires putting emotion aside. They are warned, for example, that anger will blind them to the facts as they really are. Yet cognitive science rejects the notion that emotion and reason are autonomous, warring spheres. Recently there has been increasing recognition of the harmful consequences of the narrow conception of "thinking like a lawyer" for lawyers' well-being, but these consequences are generally portrayed as a necessary trade-off between the well-being of lawyers and the preservation of analytical rigor. This Essay will argue that the harm the narrow conception of "thinking like a lawyer" poses to lawyers' well-being is not simply an ancillary issue or an unfortunate but necessary collateral consequence of engaging in rigorous, logical thinking. A conception of law that attempts to cordon off emotion is poorly suited to the complexities of legal practice and is inconsistent with modern knowledge about how legal, ethical, and moral reasoning-and indeed, legal change and reform-actually occur. This Essay will focus in particular on the emotion of anger and the consequences of attempting to banish it from the realm of legal reasoning.

Με την παρούσα μελέτη επιχειρείται μία προσέγγιση της σχέσης και αλληλεπίδρασης μεταξύ δικαίου και συναισθήματος, ορμώμενη αλλά μη περιοριζόμενη σε Νομικά Κινήματα, όπως «Δίκαιο και Συναισθήματα» (Law and Emotions) και «Δίκαιο και Αγαπή» (Law and Love). Με αφόρμηση αυτά τα Κινήματα, και σε συνδυασμό με κομβικούς δικαιικούς κλάδους, όπως οι Συγκριτικές Νομικές Σπουδές, οι Κριτικές Νομικές Σπουδές, η Φεμινιστική Νομική Θεωρία, και η Queer Νομική Θεωρία, αναδεικνύεται, πως οι ήδη υφιστάμενες συναισθηματικές πολιτικές στο δίκαιο, είναι ανελαστικές και αντικατοπτρίζουν μη ανταποκρινόμενες στην πραγματικότητα κοινωνικές κατασκευές. Έτσι, επιχειρείται μία αποδόμηση και ένας επαναπροσδιορισμός των νομικών πολιτισμών, διά μέσου μίας διαδικασίας πολιτιστικής ενσωμάτωσης, ώστε να καταστούν πιο συμπεριληπτικοί. Τέλος, εν είδει παραδείγματος, τίθενται ορισμένες εισαγωγικές παρατηρήσεις για την νομική κατοχύρωση της φιλικής αγάπης.

"Emotion und Recht: Über ein schwieriges Verhältnis", in: Emotions- und Affektsoziologie: Eine Einführung, hg. v. Aletta Diefenbach and Veronika Zink, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2024, S. 155-172. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110589214-011

Guilt poses a unique evolutionary problem. Unlike other dysphoric emotions, it is not immediately clear what its adaptive significance is. One can imagine thriving despite or even because of a lack of guilt. In this article, we review solutions offered by Scott James, Richard Joyce, and Robert Frank and show that although their solutions have merit, none adequately solves the puzzle. We offer an alternative solution, one that emphasizes the role of empathy and posttransgression behavior in the evolution of guilt. Our solution, we contend, offers a better account of why guilt evolved to play its distinctive social role.

This Commentary proposes that the criminal law should include a generic, doctrinal mitigating excuse of partial responsibility that would apply to all crimes, and that would be determined by the trier of fact.' This partial excuse would apply in cases in which a defendant's behavior satisfied the elements of the crime charged, but the defendant's rationality was non-culpably compromised and thus the defendant was not fully responsible for the crime charged.2 Current AngloAmerican criminal law contains no such generic partial excuse. Some doctrines, such as provocation/passion and extreme mental or emotional disturbance for which there is reasonable explanation or excuse, appear to operate in effect as partial excuses. They typically apply only in limited contexts, however, such as to reduce a homicide that would otherwise be murder to manslaughter.3 Criminal law already recognizes the moral importance of "partial responsibility" for determining just punishment....

Although traditionally conceived as an arena of pure rationality, law has always been deeply affected by emotions. Even more, International Law-widely considered as a more primitive legal system than the domestic ones-can easily be analyzed through the lens of collective emotions. Nowhere is the role of passions more evident than in International Relations, where pride, anger, greed, fear, empathy or compassion mainly lead the acts of States as well as non-State actors. Dealing with wars, genocides, human rights' violations or new global threats (environmental issues, nuclear issues, terrorism etc.) in the absence of a truly superior authority, interactions are indeed more guided by emotions than they are based on justified reasoning. The present paper will thus attempt to re-narrate the history of International Lawmaking as a "tale of fear and hope". Focusing especially on multilateral conventions, the present study insists on the interaction between negative and positive emotions and their impact on the future of International Law. At first, fear will be proved to be the hidden motivation behind almost every International Law-making initiative (International Law of coexistence) leading, nevertheless, to the cultivation of hope (International Law of cooperation). Thus, applying-by analogy-the Social contract theory in the global realm, International Law will be seen as progressively moving from a Hobbesian State of Nature where fear rules to a Kantian cosmopolitanism and the pursuit of hope.

This article explores the role of emotion and alienation in protracted conflict and makes suggestions as to how they might be managed. First we note the scant attention given to these topics in the mediation and negotiation literature. Then we show how emotional and relational issues are related to theories of economic and political interests, on the one hand, and narratives and ideologies of conflict, on the other. We focus on the way alienated relationships impair communication and the way they generate intense emotions, especially shame and anger. In our view, secret (unacknowledged) alienation and shame are the primary causes of intractable conflict. Finally, we propose a role for mediators in the acknowledgment of emotion and alienation as a way of resolving intractable conflicts.

Although most researchers maintain that shame and guilt are distinct emotions, the debate on their differences is still open. We aim to show that some of the current distinctions between shame and guilt need to be redrawn, and their adaptive and social implications need to be revisited. We suggest the following distinguishing criteria: the kind of self-evaluation involved (inadequacy versus harmfulness); one’s focus on the perceived discrepancy between actual and ideal self versus one’s focus on the perceived responsibility for one’s fault; and consequently the different domains of self-esteem involved. Although these criteria have been in part suggested or alluded to in the relevant literature, we use and integrate them with each other in a novel way. This allows to better distinguish between shame and guilt, as well as to account for their possible coexistence or the shift from one emotion to the other.

The timelessness of the matters of love and heartbreak is evident from the place that these themes have historically held in the literature. Fictional representations of love and estrangement are frequently recovered within legal reasoning, because of the nature of the stories portrayed, or the ethical-normative judgements and frames of reference on which their literary enunciation is based. In the field of law, the formal structuring of these matters and its penal relevance draw on ‘crimes of passion’ as an example and a sign of the legal conditions, interpretative constructs, and sociological conceptions that organize and give meaning to subjects, facts, and norms. Whether it is the cause that justifies the fact, a mitigating factor that modifies the crime or punishment, or a particularly reprehensible and perverse circumstance, this ‘crazy little thing called love’ has provoked and shaped different levels of censure and comprehension throughout history. That very elasticity is the starting point for this article, which examines the legal frameworks and the legal, literary, and historical imaginations that circulate and connect diverse interpretative communities, as well as the discursive debates over authority and normativity, in the different fictions and functions linked by their aspiration to truth and justice.

Kleists ›Michael Kohlhaas‹ und das Politische Oder: vom Recht zur Macht (und zur Geschichte des Rechtsgefühls) Kein Text von Kleist führt politische Machtkommunikation so explizit und un mittelbar vor wie ›Michael Kohlhaas‹. Dies nicht nur, insofern die Erzählung von dem zunächst begrenzten und lokalen Konflikt zwischen Kohlhaas und dem Junker Wenzel von Tronka sich ausweitet »zu einer Angelegenheit des gesamten heiligen römischen Reichs« (DKV III, 89), in die zunächst Sachsen und Brandenburg, dann Polen in Allianz mit Brandenburg sowie schließlich der Kaiser einbezogen werden, sondern auch, insofern ein komplexes Geflecht an politischen Funktionen, Institutionen und Machthierarchien erscheint: Kaiser, Kurfürst, Erzkanzler, Prinz, Kämmerer, Großkanzler, der Chef des Guberniums, der Präsident der Staatskanzlei, Hof-Assessor, Schlosshauptmann etc., wobei jeweils-je nach den politischen Verhältnissen-auch die »Veränderung der Staatsämter« (DKV III, 114) erzählt wird. Der Konflikt um die zwei Rappen des Rosshändlers wird in dem Maße als politischer Konflikt erzählt, wie die Entscheidungszwänge auf einer höheren Ebene sich jeweils auf einer unteren Ebene auswirken oder auch umgekehrt, etwa wenn der Kurfürst von Sachsen die von ihm selbst beim Kaiser eingereichte Klage und die darauffolgenden prozessualen Automatismen nicht mehr aufhalten kann. Politisch ist der Text gerade in der Konfrontation von Autonomie und Heteronomie der beteiligten Subjekte, die auf verschiedensten Ebenen in rechtliche (und zum Teil auch ökonomische) Strukturen eingebunden sind. ›Michael Kohlhaas‹ ist ein Text, der das Funktionieren politischer Macht vorführt-gerade jenseits der sonst für Kleist endemischen Ausnahmezustände. 1 Das Politische und die Machtordnung erscheinen hier vor allem als Problem der Rechtsordnung, politische Instanzen sind-von den Junkern und Landesherren über Luther bis zum Kaiser-wesentlich Rechtsinstanzen. Es geht um das Politische als Frage des Rechts und des (bürokratischen) Rechtsganges im Verhältnis zur Macht und der Gewalt ihrer Ausübung. Der Text situiert die Frage des Zusammenhangs von Recht und Gewalt allerdings nicht nur auf kommunikativer, institutioneller und politischer, sondern zugleich auf einer emotionalen, den Körper einbeziehenden Ebene: Der Protagonist wird von seinem »Rechtgefühl, das einer Goldwaage glich« (DKV III, 25), her erzählt, einem Rechtgefühl, das in seiner immer wieder erwähnten »Brust« (u. a. DKV III, 25, 47, 65) 2 verortet wird und

We argue that the emotion of guilt, in the sense of actual harm done to others from inappropriate action or inaction, is worthwhile to incorporate in evolutionary game models, as it can lead to increased cooperation, whether by promoting apology or by inhibiting defection. The study thereof can then transpire to abstract and concrete populations of nonhuman agents. Psychological Background Theorists conceive of shame and guilt as belonging to the family of self-conscious emotions (Lewis 1990) (Fischer and Tangney 1995) (Tangney and Dearing 2002), invoked through self-reflection and self-evaluation. Though both have evolved to promote cooperation, guilt and shame can be treated separately. Guilt is an inward private phenomenon, though it can promote apology, and even spontaneous public confession. Shame is inherently public, though it may too lead to apology and to the request for forgiveness (Smith 2008, pp. 96-107). Shame, however, hinges on being caught, failing to deceive, and th...

Many see the mithnagdim as total rationalists. Therefore it has been assumed that R. Hayyim of Volozhin's approach to Torah study was the same. Although rationalism may be a correct characterization of the method he used in talmudic study, it does not capture how R. Hayyim understood the essence of Torah study. Some have described Nefesh ha-Hayyim as demystifying Kabbalah. I agree that R. Hayyim opposes ecstatic Kabbalah. However, already in 1972 Norman Lamm noticed that R. Hayyim saw Torah study as a form of clinging to God. In my article, I go further and demonstrate how torah lishmah for R. Hayyim is a radical idea that includes a legitimate path to unio mystica, and even a way to divine inspiration.