Sharyn Roach Anleu

Kathy Mack

Judges embody impartial legal authority. They are the nexus between formal abstract law, the legal institution of the court, and the practical tasks of making and communicating decisions. Because emotions are often viewed as inherently irrational, disorderly, impulsive and personal, and therefore inconsistent with the impartiality required for a legitimate exercise of judicial authority, judging is usually understood to be unemotional. This conventional model of judging emphasises reason over feeling and legal rules over emotion. But, despite these powerful expectations of judicial dispassion and detachment, emotions and emotional capacities are inevitably part of judging and courtroom practice. This book addresses the place of emotion in judicial work. Grounded in empirical data – interviews, observations and surveys – it investigates how judicial officers understand, experience, deploy, display and manage emotions as part of their everyday work, especially in court. Building on a growing interest in emotions – in law and elsewhere – the book offers a much-needed empirical examination of the relationship between judging and emotion, as it considers how tensions between the demand for emotional engagement and the obligation of constraint are managed at the level of the individual judicial officer, and institutionally.

A Socio-Legal Analysis

Judging and Emotion

Bill Martin, Jr.

Maria Zadoroznyj

Fear and loathing are two powerful themes in politics, popular media, and everyday life. Fear of crime, environmental disaster, job loss, child abuse, terrorism, and more, is becoming increasingly more pervasive in our society. We are familiar with the changing physical, legal and social environments, which are part of the 'stepping up' of security measures involving increased policing and surveillance in a range of institutions and organizations. As a result in society today we have new figures to fear and loathe - 'the terrorist', 'the paedophile', 'the illegal immigrant'. These deviant social types are physically close to us even as they are socially distant - they live apparently ordinary lives in neighbourhoods alongside 'respectable citizens' Fear and Loathing in the New Century is a special issue of the Journal of Sociology and confronts several dimensions of fear and loathing. Fear and loathing have long been the reserve of social psychologists but the contributors to this publication encourage a sociological investigation of these concepts examining, for example, the social characteristics of the fearful, the social contexts in which fear emerges, the social construction of fear as a key emotion, the relationship between fear and social control, and the ways in which people manage fear. This is a timely publication seeking to analyse this social phenomenon.

Fear and Loathing in the New Century

Jessica Milner Davis

This book examines social aspects of humour relating to the judiciary, judicial behaviour, and judicial work across different cultures and eras, identifying how traditionally recorded wit and humorous portrayals of judges reflect social attitudes to the judiciary over time. It contributes to cultural studies and social science/socio-legal studies of both humour and the role of emotions in the judiciary and in judging. It explores the surprisingly varied intersections between humour and the judiciary in several legal systems: judges as the target of humour; legal decisions regulating humour; the use of humour to manage aspects of judicial work and courtroom procedure; and judicial/legal figures and customs featuring in comic and satiric entertainment through the ages. Delving into the multi-layered connections between the seriousness of the work of the judiciary on the one hand, and the lightness of humour on the other hand, this fascinating collection will be of particular interest to scholars of the legal system, the criminal justice system, humour studies, and cultural studies.

Judges, Judging and Humour

Judicial authority is constituted by everyday practices of individual judicial officers, balancing the obligations of formal law and procedure with the distinctive interactional demands of lower courts. Performing Judicial Authority in the Lower Courts draws on extensive original, independent empirical data to identify different ways judicial officers approach and experience their work. It theorizes the meanings of these variations for the legitimate performance of judicial authority. The central theoretical and empirical finding presented in this book is the incomplete fit between conventional norms of judicial performance, emphasizing detachment and impersonality, and the practical, day-to-day judicial work in high volume, time-pressured lower courts. Understanding the judicial officer as the crucial link between formal abstract law, the legal institution of the court and the practical tasks of the courtroom, generates a more complete theory of judicial legitimacy which includes the manner in which judicial officers present themselves and communicate their decisions in court.

Sharyn Roach Anleu

Books

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