Law and the Passions

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

No slave to reason: the significance of the passions in mapping the legal landscape

The impossibility of reason without passion: I feel, therefore I am

Robes and lobes: the convergence of law and neuroscience

The logos of law and moral judgment as an emotional lexis

Turtles (and the normativity of law) all the way down

Intersubjectivity, law's unconscious, and the ethical authority of the human face

The life of law as the life of reason and the passions

Chapter 2

Law, emotions and aesthetic justice

The aesthetic influence on legal sensibilities

Narrative creativity as the 'life of law' and the 'law of life'

From expressivist aesthetics to expressivist ethics

Poetry in (e)motion: expressing the inexpressible

Through the looking-glass or the mirror crack'd

Chapter 3

Law as Fear

Fear and evaluative judgments

Fear-mongering and the media: implications for justice

Where Judges fear to tread: law and the politics of fear

Fear, fetish, fantasy and legal framing strategies

Legal truths and truisms, moral metaphors and moral panic

Reimagining the foundations for justice: overcoming the new politics of fear

Chapter 4

Law as Hate

Law's symbolic violence: use of linguistic coercion in the constitution of the legal order

Law's truth and the Tinkerbell Effect

The (in-)visibility of law: 'secret' justice is justice denied

Law as hate: killing in the name of the law

On ideology and language in the classification of legal subjects: 'them' and 'us'

Reimagining the Other as self: the promise of justice fulfilled

Chapter 5

Law as Compassion

From vengeance to compassion: the two faces of 'justice'

Compassionate justice and the ethical significance of vulnerability

'Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing': 'enlarged' (empathic) perception motivates compassionate judgment

Compassion and the criminal justice system

Compassion without justice is mere sentimentality however justice without compassion is but tyranny

Chapter 6

Law as Love

Determining the 'right kind of love': love as a moral emotion

Love enriches and extends the scope of the lawyer's question 'who is my neighbour?'

Law and love: against the entitlement of wealth and the obstruction of justice

The heart as law's attorney: there can be no justice without love

The imperative of a sentimental education: in recognition of law as an activity of the heart, soul and intellect

Bibliography