Law and Emotion Research Papers (original) (raw)

One of Hasidism's most striking features is its centralization and intensification of emotional experiences within devotional life. The unruly ecstasy and enthusiasm characteristic of such a revivalist mystical movement, which often is coupled with a spiritualizing and even oppositional relationship to formalized, external obligations, has evinced conflicting understandings of Hasidism's relationship to Halakhah (Jewish law). Hasidism has concurrently been described as being slavishly obedient to Halakhah as well as harboring the aforementioned antinomian tendencies. This paper poses the question: how did the emotional intensity evoked by Hasidic religiosity affect one's obligation under the law? In this paper, I will attempt to explore the seams where emotion and law intersect through the case of the writings of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810). In particular, this paper will examine texts in which Rebbe Nachman responded to the possibility of being unable to muster up a sufficient amount of kavvanah (intentionality) to perform one's required worship in fitting fashion. I will argue that Rebbe Nachman, in the counsel he offered in response, was able to navigate a complex relationship between law and emotion by maintaining commitment to the formalized obligation to pray while, at the same time, making space for and even endorsing the feelings (specifically, frustration and desire) experienced by the individual. This nuanced approach evidences a moderate and complex relation to law, which I deem “therapeutic.” By this, I mean an approach to law in which the juridical authority (Rebbe Nachman) utilizes judicial discretion to read the law in question expansively, not to overturn the ruling but rather to provide a more wide-ranging space within the bounds of the law that include the plaintiff's concerns. In his simultaneous prioritization of the emotional aspect of religious life and advocacy for a normative legal practice, we can find in Rebbe Nachman's writings a subtle middle position between legal realism and legal formalism. This paper will thus contribute to a more robust understanding of the particular nature of Jewish mysticism within the strongly normative framework of halakhic observance.

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- Law, Legal Theory, Philosophy of Emotion, Affect Theory
- by Susan Bandes
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- Cognition and Emotion, Facial Expressions and Emotions, Remorse, Law and Emotion

Dieser Band setzt das in »Recht und Emotion I. Verkannte Zusammenhänge« (2016) begonnene Vorhaben fort. Dieses Vorhaben
impliziert eine Abkehr von der lange Zeit vorherrschenden
Auffassung, dass die Sphäre des Rechts einen affektfreien Raum
bildet oder bilden sollte. Vielmehr gilt es zu untersuchen, welche
Emotionen in welcher Weise für das Recht wichtig, sogar nötig
sind und wie umgekehrt rechtliche Prozesse auf Emotionen einwirken.
Hierzu versammelt der vorliegende Band Beiträge aus der
Philosophie und der Rechtswissenschaft. Behandelt werden u. a.
Emotionen wie Scham, Zorn und Empörung, die Frage des Verzeihens,
aktuelle Phänomene wie das Coaching von Richtern, das
sogenannte Recht auf Wahrheit und die neuerdings zu beobachtende
Renaissance von Schamstrafen. Einen gemeinsamen Bezugspunkt
bildet dabei der Gedanke, dass das entscheidende Relais
zwischen Recht und Emotion in der Erfahrung der
Verletzlichkeit zu suchen ist. Dem Unrecht, das begangen wird,
entspricht das Unrecht, das jemand erleidet. Sowohl das Recht
als auch das Feld der Emotionen lassen sich als Sphären auffassen,
die auf jeweils spezifische Weise auf Erfahrungen der Verletzlichkeit
antworten. Der Sinn für Gerechtigkeit erweist sich damit
auch als ein Sinn für Verletzlichkeit.

- by Fabian Bernhardt
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- Philosophy Of Law, Philosophy of Emotion, Emotion Theory, Law and Emotion

Was verbirgt sich hinter dem Begriff »Gerechtigkeitsgefühle«? Inwieweit spielt die gefühlte Legitimität von Recht eine Rolle? Um diesen Fragen auf die Spur zu kommen, mobilisiert der Band rechtsanthropologische, rechtssoziologische und kulturpsychologische Ansätze. In ethnographischen Fallstudien zu Madagaskar, zum Südsudan, zu Indonesien, Israel/Palästina, Peru, Uganda und Südafrika werden Gerichtssäle, Grenzübergänge, Besprechungsräume, Büros und offizielle Dokumente ebenso analysiert wie Alltagspraktiken, Mediendiskurse, Demonstrationen und Debatten in den Social Media.

- by Jonas Bens and +1
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- Legal Anthropology, History Of Emotions, Justice, Affect (Cultural Theory)

Jewish observance of a set of legal practices constituted the most obvious distinction between Jew and Gentile in antiquity. Yet Jewish ritual practice did not only affect the ways in which Jews acted but also how they felt about their Jewishness and their connection to the wider culture. Law and emotion play mutually reinforcing roles in both shaping and reflecting a society's values, an observation that invites the following questions: how did observance of Jewish dietary laws make Jews feel, and which emotional norms were involved in the production of law? The emotions of those who observed the kosher food laws were variously characterized in ancient Jewish texts as hate, a self-controlled repudiation of negative emotion, or disgust. The various opinions about how to understand the emotions that animate the dietary laws were all attempts to define the power relations between Jews and the surrounding world and address the following question: did Jews enjoy the power to integrate into their Greco-Roman surroundings?

- by Ari Mermelstein
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- Emotion, Qumranic Studies, Stoicism, Emotions (Social Psychology)
- by Fabian Bernhardt
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- Law and Emotion

Was ist gerecht? Wer diese Frage stellt, ahnt schon, dass die Antwort darauf nicht leichtfallen wird. Denn Menschen beantworten diese Frage zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten, in unterschiedlichen Kontexten, in unterschiedlichen Gefühlslagen, vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher Sachverhalte, eben höchst unterschiedlich. Warum das so ist, und unter welchen Bedingungen Menschen G-rechtigkeitsbewertungen vornehmen, ist eine wichtige Frage für die empirische Rechtsforschung. Hierzu möchte der vorliegende Band mit einer spezifischen Perspektive beitragen: mit dem Blick auf Gerechtigkeitsgefühle. Wir gehen davon aus, dass Affekte und Emotionen für die Gerechtigkeitsbewertungen von Menschen eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Gerechtigkeitsbewertungen sehen wir in der Nähe des Problems der Legitimität, also der Frage, wann und unter welchen Umständen Menschen rechtliche oder quasi-rechtliche Ordnungen als legitim, d.h. als gerechtfertigt und unterstützenswert wahrnehmen. Gerechtigkeitsgefühle verstehen wir daher als die affektiven und emotionalen Bewertungen der Legitimität normativer Ordnungen. Dieser Band versammelt zwei einordnende und sieben ethnographische Beiträge, die Gerechtigkeitsgefühle, ihre Ursachen und Wirkungen, in verschiedenen kulturellen und rechtlichen Kontexten beschreiben und analysieren. In die-sem einleitenden Beitrag gehen wir zunächst auf die Forschungstraditionen zu Affekten, Emotionen und Recht ein, die dieser Band aufgreift und zusammen-führt. Anschließend stellen wir unseren Arbeitsbegriff von Gerechtigkeitsgefühlen vor, auf den die anschließenden Beiträge in ihren Fallstudien Bezug nehmen. Schließlich geben wir einen einführenden Überblick über die versammelten ethnographischen Studien.

- by Jonas Bens and +1
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- Political and Legal Anthropology, Law and Emotions, Legal and Political Philosophy, Rechtssoziologie

When affective and emotional dynamics relate to the establishment of relatively stable evaluative regimes of meaning, which govern, structure and regulate how people make sense of the world and how the world appears in people’s sense-making, one can apply the term sentiment. Investigating sentiments is therefore central for coming to terms with political, legal, religious, and moral orders and the myriad of practices that bring them about, challenge them, transform them and aim to stabilize and reproduce them. The concept of sentiment provides an important tool to analyse the normative dimension of affective societies.

- by Jonas Bens and +1
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- Emotion, Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Political Anthropology

¿Qué relación existe entre el derecho y la literatura? ¿Por qué un grupo sostenido y creciente de juristas, filósofos y también de profesores de literatura decidió girar su mirada hacia el objeto y la disciplina del otro? ¿Qué buscaban allí y qué decía –y sigue diciendo, quizá– esa búsqueda sobre el terreno propio? ¿Qué puede, en definitiva, aprender el derecho de la literatura y viceversa? Las relaciones entre el derecho y la literatura. Una lectura del proyecto de Martha Nussbaum recorre estas preguntas a partir de dos estrategias. Por un lado, ofrece una reconstrucción de lo que se llamó desde la década de los setenta «movimiento
derecho y literatura» y explora en ese ámbito los modos en que la literatura ha servido a lo largo de más de cuarenta años para presionar por la transformación de las formas de pensar el derecho. Luego presenta una lectura detallada de uno de los proyectos singulares de más amplio alcance que le dio a la literatura un lugar central: el proyecto filosófico de Martha Nussbaum.

The distress and anxiety faced by young trans(gender) people generates varied social, medical, and legal concerns. In Australia, minors have had to appeal to the jurisdiction of the Family Court of Australia if they wished to undergo medical or surgical changes to their bodies in order to alleviate ‘gender dysphoria’ and affirm their gender. In approving almost every application to date and, most recently, dispensing with the requirement to seek Court approval, the Family Court has exhibited care, concern, and compassion when addressing anxieties faced by young trans people and formulating therapeutic determinations to relieve those anxieties. This paper maps out this affective terrain – the alleviation of anxiety and cultivation of care – by exploring key appellate Family Court decisions relating to young trans people made between 2004 and 2018. A queer engagement with Australian Family Court decisions enables us to consider the extent to which alleviating anxiety and cultivating care secure the wellbeing of young trans and gender non-conforming people.

- by Senthorun Raj
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- Emotion, Jurisprudence, Medical Law, Transgender Studies

Identified as contemporary ‘folk devils’, children who are allegedly involved in rioting
and disorder at interface areas in Northern Ireland have become the targets of
stereotypical media portrayals. Ongoing issues relating to the legacy of over 30 years of
conflict in Northern Ireland include contestation of space, the formal and informal
policing of children and young people, and the persistence of paramilitary punishment
attacks. This context raises significant issues in relation to children’s rights. One
contentious formal policing response to disorder, described as ‘the worst rioting in
years’, was publication by the the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) of the
images of children and young people whom they wanted to question, under the code
name Operation Exposure. The images had been captured on closed-circuit television
(CCTV) during incidents of interface violence in the summer of 2010. This policing
tactic became the subject of protracted legal proceedings.

- by Faith Gordon
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- Criminology, Criminal Law, Law of evidence, Critical Criminology

The Supreme Court of India's decision in Koushal, besides lacking in legal logic, also displayed a marked absence of another essential judicial quality: that of empathy. It is also a virtue that was in abundant display before the Delhi High Court both during the Naz Foundation hearings and then again in the text of the judgment. In tandem with the Supreme Court's lack of empathy was an attempt to annul a discourse of queer intimacy that the Delhi High Court had brought into the judicial imagination in India. This essay will scrutinize the Koushal Court's attempt to separate humanity from carnality, acts from identity and sex from love in light of the hearings before the Court.

- by Danish Sheikh
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- Constitutional Law, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Law and Literature

In The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, the International Criminal Court (ICC) tried the destruction of UNESCO World Heritage sites as a war crime for the first time. In this case, the value of things in relation to the value of persons became the central issue. Based on courtroom ethnography conducted during the proceedings and informed by affect and emotion research, this article identifies the rhetorical practice of sentimentalising persons and things as an important process of legal meaning making. Through sentimentalising, all parties rhetorically produce normative arrangements of bodies by way of emotionally differentiating the relevant persons, things and other entities from and affectively relating them to each other. Sentimentalising provides an affective-emotional frame in which to determine the degree of guilt and innocence, justice and injustice.

- by Jonas Bens
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- Emotion, Anthropology, Material Culture Studies, Political Anthropology

- by Olaf Zenker
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- Legal Anthropology, Political Science, History Of Emotions, Justice

Emotions and law are often thought to be mutually exclusive. However, ever more academicians note that this is not the whole picture: since the late 1980s and early 90s studies on the relationship between the legal and the affective began to be conducted. Since then, both the number of works and number of researchers working on this problem grew significantly. Calls for the identification of a separate trend resulted in dubbing this new enterprise ‘Law & Emotions’. This article collates and synthesizes notes from the field: it is based on the analysis of
numerous findings and approaches of the aforementioned research movement. It is written with a Polish reader in mind. As Polish jurisprudence is notably silent on the presence of affect in legal institutions, the objective of the text is to provide a cross-section of Law & Emotions, expose its mission and suggest in what ways
it may revolutionize contemporary legal thinking movement – and, hopefully, to show why Polish legal scholars should care about it.

- by Julia Wesołowska
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- Jurisprudence, Law and Emotions, Law and Emotion, Human Behavior and the Law
- by Edoardo Fittipaldi
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- Normativity, Human Ethology, Law and Emotions, Law and Emotion

The law has had an uneasy relationship with emotion, and we are trained to think that the best decisions are those made based on reason alone. The primacy of reason can be traced at least as far back as Plato, who believed that emotion interferes with reason and diverts us from truth. This Article begins by exploring our ancient mistrust of emotion, particularly in the law, and more recent theories in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience positing that reason and motion work together in all forms of decision-making to help us make better decisions. Because “thinking like a lawyer” may more aptly be described as “feelthinking like a lawyer,” this Article then identifies several points in the legal reasoning process where the influence of emotion may be most significant and noticeably “felt.” It concludes that because feelthinking occurs on behalf of clients within specific ethical constraints, understanding the role of emotion in legal decision-making is useful both to the...

- by Kristen Tiscione
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- Psychology, Legal Writing, Law and Emotion
- by Federico Bacco
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- Criminology, Criminal Law, Criminal Justice, Hate Speech

Hormones have a lot to answer for. Scientific evidence of the endocrinological effects of various hormonal steroids - e.g. estrogen, progesterone, testosterone - is starting to show how vital a role hormones can play in regulating our... more

- by Caroline Henaghan
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- Law and Emotion

Identified as contemporary ‘folk devils’, children who are allegedly involved in rioting and disorder at interface areas in Northern Ireland have become the targets of stereotypical media portrayals. Ongoing issues relating to the legacy of over 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland include contestation of space, the formal and informal policing of children and young people, and the persistence of paramilitary punishment attacks. This context raises significant issues in relation to children’s rights. One contentious formal policing response to disorder, described as ‘the worst rioting in years’, was publication by the the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) of the images of children and young people whom they wanted to question, under the code name Operation Exposure. The images had been captured on closed-circuit television (CCTV) during incidents of interface violence in the summer of 2010. This policing tactic became the subject of protracted legal proceedings.

- by Faith Gordon
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- Criminology, Criminal Law, Law of evidence, Critical Criminology

מני מאוטנר
פניה עוז זלצברגר
ענת רוזנברג

- by Orit Rozin
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- Legal History, Law and culture, Law and Emotions, Law and History