Comparing culturally embedded frames of judicial dispassion

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to outline a theoretical framework for the comparative study of emotions in Western legal systems of different countries. Our focus is on the legal actors, and our primary interest is how internal legal culture - conceptualized as ‘the emotive-cognitive judicial frame’ - is embedded in a broader context of a socio-culturally specific emotional regime. The emotive-cognitive judicial frame combines national emotion norms with universal professional emotion norms, deriving from the Western regime of judicial dispassion. The chapter first reviews the relation between rationality and emotion and its implications for the legal system; thereafter presents the mainly historical research into the socio-cultural variations of emotional regimes; continues to suggest a basic theoretical toolkit applicable in the comparative study of emotive-cognitive judicial frames in different national emotional regimes; and some concrete methods and an agenda for future research.