Stina Bergman Blix, "Orderly Feelings in Law: An International Comparison of Legal Decision-making"

Lecture topic:
There is a longstanding belief that emotions bring disorder into legal decision-making. Judges and prosecutors should not take decisions in anger or out of pity. But are there also emotions that are essential to legal decision making? Emotions needed to motivate lines of inquiry, assess information, and choose between alternatives. This presentation identifies the orderly feelings involved when legal professionals evaluate evidence and decide on guilt in criminal cases. Interest in hearing evidence, doubt in the credibility of witnesses, trust in fellow judges’ sincerity, and certainty to settle on a ruling are all essential emotional components for guiding legal professionals’ assessment of criminal cases. By comparing these orderly feelings in the different legal traditions and emotional cultures of Sweden, Italy, and the United States, we can trace similarities and differences in how truth, morality and interpretation play out in the process of evaluating evidence and settling on decisions in court.

Bio:
Stina Bergman Blix is a professor of sociology at Uppsala University. Her research concerns the sociology of emotions, and her theoretical interest includes rationality, social interaction, decision-making, emotional cultures, and professionalization processes. Her latest projects investigate emotions in court from several perspectives: in and around court hearings, and how objectivity is constructed in legal decision-making. She leads the ERC-project JUSTEMOTIONS (2018-2025) and coordinates the Research Group Emotion-Justice-Interaction (EmoJI).