Bergman Blix Stina, Törnqvist Nina
Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
Front Sociol. 2024 Nov 12;9:1423885. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1423885. eCollection 2024.
Autonomy and independence are key features of legal decision-making. Yet, decision-making in court is fundamentally interactional and collective, both during the information gathering phase of hearings, and in evaluations during deliberations. Depending on legal system and type of court, deliberations can include different constellations of lay judges, jurors, or judge panels. In this article, we explore the collective dynamic of knowledge acquisition in legal decision-making, by analysing their emotional undercurrents. We show how judges balance uncertainty and certainty in legal deliberation, elaborating on (1) trust; (2) uncertainty exchange, and; (3) certainty as an agile emotion. Theoretically, the article combines an emotive-cognitive judicial framework, which understands emotion and reason as intersecting and continuous, with social interactionist theory. The analysis builds on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, including shadowing and interviews with judges as well as observations during court proceedings and deliberations. The article actualizes the joint accomplishment of legal independence, and contributes with a nuanced account of how the decision-making process unfolds in legal deliberations.
自主性和独立性是法律决策的关键特征。然而，法庭上的决策从根本上来说是互动性和集体性的，无论是在听证会的信息收集阶段，还是在审议过程中的评估环节。根据法律体系和法庭类型的不同，审议可能包括不同组合的非专业法官、陪审员或法官小组。在本文中，我们通过分析法律决策中知识获取的情感暗流，来探讨其集体动态。我们展示了法官在法律审议中如何平衡不确定性和确定性，具体阐述如下：（1）信任；（2）不确定性交流；以及（3）作为一种灵活情感的确定性。从理论上讲，本文将一种情感认知的司法框架与社会互动主义理论相结合，该司法框架将情感和理性理解为相互交织且连续的。该分析基于在瑞典进行的广泛民族志实地研究，包括跟随法官并对其进行访谈，以及在法庭诉讼和审议过程中的观察。本文实现了法律独立性的共同成就，并对法律审议中的决策过程如何展开进行了细致入微的阐述。
