Abstract

Law and emotion has evolved into a vibrant and diverse field, drawing in legal scholars and interdisciplinary partners from across the social sciences, hard sciences, and humanities. This introduction to the special section on law and emotion traces the history and theoretical underpinnings of this movement and situates the special section within it. The insights of emotion research can help legal scholars and practitioners to better calibrate law to human realities and to foster a desired set of emotional experiences among law’s subjects. Law, in turn, offers to researchers a forum within which to explore emotion in a dynamic and influential real-world setting. The introduction ends with a call to disciplined interdisciplinarity.