Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Emotions are a big part of our everyday lives. I would say – emotions are our life. The good, the bad and the ugly emotions showcase our abilities to process life. Inevitably, emotions are gonna be present in legal world. Because of this, I would like to look at emotions as a foundation for legal disputes.

What is an dispute? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, dispute (noun) is a verbal controversy. Personally, I think emotions are main reason for every dispute, ever. But this time I’m gonna look at their influence over legal disputes.

Firstly, let’s imagine wife and husband who are going through divorce. Obviously, it is an emotionally draining process, especially if it concerns children or dividing property. But the moment this couple involves in their argument any sort of legal professional help, this family matter becomes legal dispute. Now reason for this (legal) problem is not law or its application process, but strong feelings felt by all involved parties.

Secondly, even though this example illustrated emotion involvement in civil case, I would argue that in criminal, administrative cases and every other case type, reasoning for disagreement between parties lies not in the way how law regulates specific situation, but how people react to these regulations.

While law is a way how state makes social norms into legal norms, it can’t regulate our feelings. Which, in my opinion, makes emotions more regulative than law. It makes me think that, person can live under unjust legal regulations while these regulations doesn’t have negative impact on their emotional side, but person will not be able to live under just regulations if these regulations negatively impact their emotional state.

Feel free to disagree with previous statement, but I think no one can deny the fact that emotions play big role in the way how we look at things, no matter how objective they are supposed to be.

/M. P./