About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

99 Calif. L. Rev. 629 (2011)
The Persistent Cultural Script of Judicial Dispassion

handle is hein.journals/calr99 and id is 633 raw text is: The Persistent Cultural Script of Judicial Dispassion Terry A. Maroney* In contemporary Western jurisprudence it is never appropriate for emotion-anger, love, hatred, sadness, disgust, fear, joy-to affect judicial decision making. A good judge should feel no emotion; if she does, she puts it aside. To call a judge emotional is a stinging insult, signfying a failure of discipline, impartiality, and reason. Insistence on judicial dispassion is a cultural script of unusual longevity and potency. But not only is the script wrong as a matter of human nature-emotion does not, in fact, invariably tend toward sloppiness, bias, and irrationality-it is also not quite so monolithic as it appears. Legal theorists, and judges themselves, sometimes have asserted that judicial emotion is inevitable and, perhaps, to be welcomed. But these dissents have neither eroded the script's power nor blossomed into a robust theory of how emotion might coexist with, or even contribute to, judicial decision making. Close examination of this hidden intellectual history reveals why. Scholars and judges consistently have stumbled over foundational questions of emotion's nature and value. Fortunately, the history reveals cures as well as causes. We can move forward by way of disciplined, sustained recourse to a newly vibrant emotional epistemology, a project that will create a distinct space for the story of judicial emotion. Copyright C 2011 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications. * Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School. Thanks to Kathy Abrams, Susan Bandes, Mark Brandon, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Anne Dailey, Chris Guthrie, Clare Huntington, the Honorable Alex Kozinski, Melissa Murray, Alistair Newbern, Suzanna Sherry, Dan Simon, Kevin Stack, Christine Sun, and the editorial staff of the California Law Review; participants in workshops at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Temple University Beasely School of Law, and University of Colorado Law School; and participants in the annual meetings of the Association of American Law Schools, Law and Society Association, Gruter Institute for Law and Human Behavior, and Association for Law, Culture, and the Humanities. For excellent research assistance, I thank Elizabeth Fisher, Stephen Jordan, and Christopher Weber. In memory of Richard Nagareda. 629

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most