Emotions and International Law offers an introduction to the rich world of emotions research and illustrates how emotions influence the study and practice of international law. The book's main message is that international lawyers and legal scholars ought to acknowledge the influence of emotions in their work and evaluate what these emotions are and what they are doing in specific legal settings and contexts. A starting premise of this book is that contemporary international law is grounded in a rationalist emotional regime with associated feeling rules. The rationalist emotional regime is not void of emotion but rationalizes certain (expressions of) emotion according to prevailing feeling rules.
The book identifies and explores conspicuous feeling rules of various actors of international law in distinct legal settings, posing questions like: Who gets to grieve? For whom do we have compassion? Whose fear and anger are perceived as rational and therefore legitimate? The book identifies feeling rules by exploring individual (expressions of) emotions, and it also studies emotions as discourse in tracing the construction of the rationalist emotional regime. Ultimately, this book engages with the politics of emotion in international law and argues that emotions are central to the distribution of power and to giving meaning to justice.
