The emotional labour of judges in jury trials
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| Author | COLETTE BARRY,CHALEN WESTABY,MARK COEN,NIAMH HOWLIN |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12458 |
DOI: 10.1111/j ols.12458
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The emotional labour of judges in jury trials
COLETTE BARRY1CHALEN WESTABY2MARK COEN1
NIAMH HOWLIN1
1Sutherland School of Law, University
College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
2Department of Law and Criminology,
Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield,
England
Correspondence
Colette Barry,Sutherland School of Law,
University College Dublin, Dublin 4,
Ireland.
Email: colette.barry1@ucd.ie
Abstract
Judges are required to suppress and manage their own
emotions as well as those of other court users and staff
in their everyday work. Previous studies have examined
the complex emotional labour undertaken by judges, but
there is limited research on the emotion management
performed by judges in their interactions with jurors.
Drawing on a qualitative study of judge–jury relations in
criminal trials in Ireland, we illustrate how judges learn
and habituate emotional labour practices through infor-
mal and indirect processes. Judges described managing
their emotions to demonstrate impartiality and objec-
tivity. Their accounts also underline the importance of
balancing presentations of neutrality with empathy, as
well as being mindful of the potential emotional toll of
jury service on jurors.
1 INTRODUCTION
Emotions have been ‘formally excised’ from the application of judicial authority.1Thisis because
the law itself has been regarded as rational in nature, which in turn has produced a dichotomized
view of reason and emotion.2Thus, legal rationality is perceived to be impervious to emotional
1S. Roach Anleu et al., ‘The Emotional Dimension of Judging: Issues, Evidence, and Insights’ (2016) 52 Court Rev.: The J.
of the American Judges Association 60, at 60.
2T. A. Maroney,‘Judges and Their Emotions’ (2013) 64 Northern Ireland Legal Q.11.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, providedthe original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Cardiff University (CU).
J. Law Soc. 2023;50:477–499. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols 477
478 JOURNAL OF LAWAND SOCIETY
influences, which reinforces its link to rationality,reason,3and impartiality.4Such interpretations
of the law have been central to judicial reasoning, thus making ‘an emotional judge .. . by defini-
tion a bad judge’.5Thisis further supported by the notion that positive public perceptions of judges
are based on the understanding that they are ‘impartial/non-biased and therefore emotionless’.6
Judges are expected to achieve this by shutting off all of their feelings.7This, it has been argued,
has led to a situation where it has been considered unnecessary to talk about the emotional skills
needed by judges in the management of their own emotions and those of others.8
However, as Terry Maroney suggests, quoting Jackson J, a United States (US) judge, ‘emotion-
less judges are “mythical beings”, like “Santa Claus or Uncle Sam or Easter bunnies”’.9Maroney
further explains that the ‘[l]iteral elimination of judicial emotion is not just unrealistic as a goal;
it is destructive as a value’.10 Expectingjudges to eliminate all emotion effectively means the sup-
pression of emotion. This can lead to ‘“maladaptive behaviour” rather than encouraging judges to
develop adaptive forms of emotion regulation’.11 The results can mean that judges are ‘less able to
recognize and respond to their work-related emotions’, allowing undesirable emotions to surface,
which may have negative physical and mental health repercussions.12
Researchers haverecognized that judges ‘experience emotion, expend energy to cope with it and
find that effort difficult’.13 Furthermore,recent scholarship sheds light on the emotional labour of
judicial officers, and particularly how judges in the courtroom must manage both their own and
others’ emotions in accordance with professional occupational norms.14 This work analyses how
judges manage emotions in the courtroom in such a way as todemonstrate neutrality, impartiality,
and objectivity,15 often focusing on their interactions with certain court actors– namely, lawyers,
jurors, witnesses, victims, and defendants.
3J. A. Scarduzio, ‘Maintaining Order through Deviance? The Emotional Deviance, Power, and Professional Work of
Municipal Court Judges’ (2011) 25 Management Communication Q.283.
4S. S. Daicoff, ‘Lawyer Know Thyself:A Review of Empirical Research on Attorney Attributes Bearing on Professionalism’
(1997) 46 The American University Law Rev.1337.
5T.A. Maroney and J. J. Gross, ‘The Ideal of the Dispassionate Judge: An Emotion Regulation Perspective’(2014) 6 Emotion
Rev. 142, at 142.
6Id.
7Maroney,op. cit., n. 2.
8Maroney and Gross, op. cit., n. 5.
9Maroney,op. cit., n. 2, p. 13, quoting United States v. Ballard [1944] 322 US 78, 93 94 (Jackson J dissenting).
10 Id., p. 15.
11 Maroney and Gross, op. cit., n. 5, p. 143.
12 Id., p. 149.
13 Id., p. 144.
14 S. Bergman Blix and Å. Wettergren,‘Humour in the Swedish Courts: Managing Emotions, Status and Power’ in Judges,
Judging and Humour, eds J.M. Davies and S. Roach Anleu (2018) 179; S. Bergman Blix and Å. Wettergren,Professional Emo-
tions in Court: A Sociological Perspective (2019); Maroney, op.cit., n. 2; T. A. Maroney, ‘Empirically Investigating Judicial
Emotion’(2019) 9 Oñati Socio-Legal Series799; Maroney and Gross, op.cit., n. 5; S. Roach Anleu and K. Mack, ‘Magistrates’
EverydayWork and Emotional Labour’ (2005) 32 J. of Law and Society 590; Roach Anleu et al., op. cit., n. 1; S. Roach Anleu
and K. Mack, ‘Judicial Humour and Inter-Professional Relations in the Courtroom’in Judges, Judging and Humour,edsJ.
M. Davies and S. RoachAnleu (2018) 141; S. Roach Anleu et al., ‘Researching Judicial Emotion and Emotion Management’
in Research Handbook on Law and Emotion, eds S. A. Bandes et al. (2021) 180; Scarduzio, op. cit., n. 3.
15 M. Wojciechowski et al., ‘Emotional Labour of Judges’ (2015) 10 Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej 97.
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