Understanding Law and Emotion

Abstract

Understanding the contributions and the implications of law and emotion scholarship requires an acknowledgement of the different approaches within it. A significant part of law and emotion scholarship is focused on arguing for the relevance of emotion and on identifying emotion in legal processes and actors. Other parts of it venture further to ask how law can affect the expression and content of emotions themselves. This scholarship challenges legal positivist foundations (law as rational and objective), as well as some other established divisions in thinking, both in law, and more generally in the history of ideas (reason vs. emotion, the private vs. the public). The other important factor, which this article explores, is the methodology employed by law and emotion scholarship.