Law and emotion: methods and the field

The workshop brought together 16 researchers (and 15 paper presentations) working in diverse disciplinary contexts -anthropology, creative practice, criminology, cultural studies, history, law, literary studies, media, psychology, sociology and sociolegal studies -all focusing on law and emotion.Emotion is present and significant throughout law, but methodological approaches to studying emotion in and around law remain disparate.The purpose of the workshop was to take stock of methodologies, methods and data that can rigorously account for emotion in legal contexts and develop a vision for more effective cross/inter/multi/trans-disciplinary research approaches.To date, law and emotion scholarship has identified the 'problem' as far as the what (that emotion is not the antithesis of law) and the why (why it is important to think about law and emotion together), but has offered less regarding the how (how to investigate emotion in and around law).The four articles in this special section begin to address the 'how'.Each is designed to open up conversation about what practitioners of law and emotions research 'do', to highlight some of the central methods and approaches deployed in different areas, and to draw out the important implications of these approaches to the limits of how knowledge is made.Twenty-five years ago, 'law and emotion' as a focus of study was heralded via the edited collection The Passions of Law (Bandes, 1999).This collection was the first to examine the role of emotions in the practice and conception of law and justice.