Law, reason, and emotion

Preface --Introduction /Mortimer Sellers --Law, reason, and emotion /Mortimer Sellers --Law's emotions /Robin West --The domestication of emotion /András Sajó --Mind and rights : neuroscience, philosophy, and the foundations of legal justice /Matthias Mahlmann --Rights, reason, and emotion /Daniel Mendonca --The law of honor /Anthony Appiah --Interactive reason and law /Ko Hasegawa --The wrath of reason and the great sentiment : vindicating emotion in law /Patricia Mindus.

This book examines the role and importance of reason and emotion in justice and the law. Eight lawyers and philosophers of law consider law's basis in the universal human need for society, our innate sense of justice, and many other powerful inclinations and emotions, including the desire for fairness and even for law itself. Human beings are deeply social creatures, inspired by social and other emotions, which can ennoble, support, or undermine the law. Law gains legitimacy and effectiveness when reason recognizes and embraces human emotions for the benefit of society as a whole. This volume explores the power and purposes of reason and emotion in the law

"This book will consider the relationship between law, reason, and emotion. Law, reason, and emotion have a long, close, and complicated connection in the history of philosophy and justice. This is nothing new. Cicero famously observed that "law is the highest reason, inherent in nature," which neatly captures the mutual dependency between emotions and the law"--