This research area focuses on how legal and political structures and institutions have made use of emotion and shaped its expression. The projects demonstrate how particular emotions have articulated and enforced the institutionalization of human law, God-given ‘natural laws,’ ‘biological laws,’ and other political and legal discourses and practices. They also trace how the emotional expressions of justice, punishment, equality, and the affirmation and denial of rights, among other concepts, have altered the political landscape and created new legal frameworks.
