Is an angry judge a bad judge? Not necessarily, says professor Terry Maroney of Vanderbilt University Law School.
"Anger is the quintessentially judicial emotion," Maroney says. "It involves appraisal of wrongdoing, attribution of blame and assignment of punishment - precisely what we ask of judges."
Maroney says that assertion goes against the grain of the conventional view - that judges should not have emotions, and if they do, they should do everything in their power to overcome them.
Maroney is professor of law, professor of Medicine, Health and Society and Co-director, Social Justice Program. She specializes in criminal law, juvenile justice and the role of emotion in law, drawing heavily on interdisciplinary scholarship. Her current work examines the impact of emotion on judicial decision making. The most recent article in this series, "Angry Judges," is forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Review.
