Law Commons^™

Angry Judges, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law Review

Judges get angry. Law, however, is of two minds as to whether they should; more importantly, it is of two minds as to whether judges' anger should influence their behavior and decisionmaking. On the one hand, anger is the quintessentially judicial emotion. It involves appraisal of wrongdoing, attribution of blame, and assignment of punishment-precisely what we ask of judges. On the other, anger is associated with aggression, impulsivity, and irrationality. Aristotle, through his concept of virtue, proposed reconciling this conflict by asking whether a person is angry at the right people, for the right reasons, and in the right way. …