Law and Emotion: The Implications of Neuroscience for Legal Decision-Making

Since the prevalence of the ideals of enlightenment, Law and emotion opposed as distinct area, a dualism which appeared in the judicial tradition and legal decision making with its emphasis on impartiality, objectivity and rationality. Despite confronting several emotion-evoking situations in courts, a judge is expected to experience no emotion or put them aside in case of having such feelings. The new findings from neuroscience and cognitive psychology have doubted the reasonableness of such expectations. Therefore, the relationship between legal decision-making, reason and emotion is a question to be reconsidered.

We perform a literature review using neuroscience data to determine whether the current expectation of judging is realistic.

Ethical Considerations: 

In all stages of the present study, while respecting the originality of the texts, honesty and trustworthiness have been observed.

The researches in neuroscience and moral judgment have evolved the field of legal decision making by proving that a shared mechanism known as mirror neurons is the evolutional basis for empathy and the common language of rights. Besides, the dual model of decision making incorporate both system 1 which is emotional, immediate and unconscious and system 2 which is known as rational, slow and conscious. It is not possible to arrive at a rational decision or a moral judgement without emotional processes, as emotion is the source of information, bring a matter of concern to somebody’s attention and has a behavioral attitude toward eliminating or accepting the stimulus.

Moral Judgement and qualified decision making inevitably contain emotional process alongside reasonable process. As a competent judge is someone who has a high capability in moral judgement, the traditional portrait of dispassionate judge is misguided. Putting Emotions asides is not possible practically, the fact which shed lights on the importance of emotion regulation in judging.