ABSTRACT
The view that dominates in law is that emotions destroy objectivity and neutrality, are the enemy of truth and a threat to the rule of law. While law and emotion scholars, and the critical law movement more generally, have now been battering against this view for some time, students are regularly met at the door of their law degrees with a clear message that emotion is irrelevant and dangerous to learning about law. I invited my contract law students to consider legal problems emotionally. This exercise elicited responses that went to the big questions on the role and function of law in society. It also showed that thinking about emotions is not to be feared. It will not lead to the abandonment of doctrinal teaching. Nor will it stop our students from thinking ‘like a lawyer’, instead it may well lead to a better understanding of the law, its function, and its relationship with the political and economic contexts in which it functions.
Renata Grossi, When emotion came to contract law class, Law Teacher. Published online: 29 July 2025.
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