The wrath of reason and the grace of sentiment: vindicating emotion in law
Abstract
Why is Justice required to be blind to passions? The standard model of jurisprudence offers two lines of answers: (1) Justice is about formal rationality, and judging is essentially reason-giving, while emotions are irrational feelings, so justice is blind to passions; (2) Justice ought to be predictable to live up to the rule of law and judges should strive towards impartiality, while passions obscures judgment and instigate prejudice and partiality, so justice should be blind to passions, lest it decays into its very opposite. Mainstream jurisprudence also incorporates two major lines of criticism against these claims: (3) Detractors argue against (a) that law suffers from indeterminacy and judges from prejudices; (4) detractors argue against (b) that equity requires practical reasoning when not empathy, mitigating strict law. These opinions are all grounded on specific, but often uncritically assumed, accounts of emotion. While (1), (2) and (3) are rooted in an irrationalism approach to emotion; (4) stems from a cognitivist approach to emotion. Both of these approaches are problematic. This paper attempts to shed light on the underlying value of emotions and highlights some of their problematic aspects. No matter if you defend (1)–(4), today lawyers need to understand in detail significance of emotions in law.
Keywords:
emotion, reason, law, justice, judge, passion, cognitivist approach, irrationalist approach
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01.03.2016
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Mindus, P. . (2016). The wrath of reason and the grace of sentiment: vindicating emotion in law. Pravovedenie, 60(2), 6–47. Retrieved from https://pravovedenie.spbu.ru/article/view/6850
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