This pioneering book develops an emotion-centred approach to legal analysis, offering a new way of understanding law through themes of authority, recognition, expectation and distribution rather than conventional doctrinal categories. Exploring anger, shame, disappointment and envy across a wide range of legal fields, it examines how law shapes the emotional lives of those it governs.
Rejecting the concept that law is a system based solely on reason, logic and rules, leading scholars consider how various emotions reveal key aspects of legal life, from questions of authority and fairness to trust, recognition and inequality. Chapters demonstrate how adopting an emotions-informed lens serves as a distinctive way of understanding law itself, rather than seeing emotion as something that merely influences legal decision-making. The book establishes an accessible and thought-provoking perspective on law as a fundamentally human enterprise, encouraging dialogue across traditional doctrinal boundaries and disciplines including human rights, environmental law, employment and intellectual property.
Emotions and the Law is an indispensable resource for researchers studying the relationship between emotions and legal reasoning, as well as institutions and experience. Scholars and students with an interest in jurisprudence, socio-legal studies and the relationship between law and other disciplines such as psychology, sociology and political science will also benefit from its invaluable insights.
