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

Illustrations ranging from old skating prints to contemporary photographs of Olympic stars Tai Babilonia, Linda Fratianne, and John Curry augment a look at skating as a sport and as a spectacle

American Neon

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.

Kathy Mack

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