Professional Emotions in Court

"Cogent arguments supported with fascinating data make Professional Emotions in Court a tour de force. Bergman Blix and Wettergren reveal not only that court processes are infused with emotions but show also how the actors involved – judges, prosecutors and lawyers – believe that their practices are impersonal if not rational. This is sociology at its best, changing the way we conceive institutions, knowledge and routine rituals." - Jack Barbalet, Australian Catholic University, Australia, and Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong.

"Professional Emotions in Court offers a lucid and important reconceptualization of the legal notion of objectivity. The authors place their extensive interview and observational data in a legal and sociological framework, illustrating the ways in which implicit rules and assumptions about emotion shape the behavior and the decisions of prosecutors and judges. This is a rigorous look at a fascinating subject, with implications for both common law and civil legal systems." - Susan A. Bandes, DePaul University College of Law, USA.

"[…] the book offers a substantial contribution to a growing field of studies concerning emotion and the law. With its rich data and the authors’ sociological eye for detail, the study reveals the importance of judges’ and prosecutors’ emotion management practices and will be a must-read for years to come." - Malin Åkerström, Symbolic Interaction.

"While the Swedish judge with their stone face may seem a million miles away from the American judge who sheds tears in court then hugs a defendant, much can be learned about emotions across a range of justice contexts by adopting the approach taken by Bergman Blix and Wettergren. Their analysis reveals the inner workings of background emotions for Swedish legal professionals. However, it raises somewhat more universal questions about the tensions between lay and professional emotions and frames, the relationship between background and foreground emotions, and the limits of the emotive-cognitive judicial frame. This book can and should generate a broader discussion about emotions in legal settings." - Meredith Rossner, Journal of Law and Society.

"…to explore the role of emotions, researchers need to tackle the issue of ‘how to study emotion in a space where it is claimed to be absent?’. It appears that Bergman Blix and Wettergren have managed to tackle this challenge successfully. Their book describes a case study covering four district courts in Sweden, together with their respective prosecution offices. […] The results are a detailed and nuanced examination of how emotions interact with the courtroom and its legal actors, as well as a consideration of relevant organisational and structural dimensions, such as notions of power and time. […] of particular value is their conclusion that a greater level of critical reflection is required in relation to the role of emotions. […] Having begun their research tackling the challenge of researching emotions within a (perceived to be) emotionless environment, the authors therefore effectively leave their readers with a new challenge: how can the judiciary and the legal profession begin to engage with emotions in a way which reflects their situated, embedded and inescapable presence within all aspects of legal work? This is a question which, as this book demonstrates, is important and valuable." - Emma Jones, The Howard Journal of Crime and Criminal Justice