Photo courtesy of Ruby Japenga. // Professor Bandes spoke to Hofstra students and faculty about the importance of emotions in the legal system.

Susan A. Bandes, centennial professor emeritus of law at DePaul University, appeared at Hofstra’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law on Wednesday, Oct. 20, to hold this year’s Howard Liechtenstein distinguished professorship lecture in legal ethics. 

  Bandes, who has written over 70 academic articles, talked about the importance of emotions in the legal system. She started writing about this topic in the 1980s when the stereotype was that women were too emotional.  

 Ellen Yaroshefsky, director of the Monroe Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, holds the current Liechtenstein distinguished professorship at Hofstra. She introduced Bandes as “courageous, bold and inspiring” in her decision of talking about emotions in law as a woman of her time. 

 Bandes began her lecture by saying that students are asked to open themselves up to a new way of thinking when they enter law school and how there are many implicit rules that students must abide by. 

 Bandes elaborated on what she was taught in law school: “To be rigorous, tough, lawyer-like ... I would need to put emotions aside.”  

 According to Bandes, this way of thinking leads to negative consequences for those practicing law, those affected by law and for the integrity of law itself. It also deprives people of critical tools like their moral compass, empathy and moral outrage. 

 Jenna Chierchio, a law student, agrees. “It is important to know how to integrate emotions in certain decisions,” Chierchio said. “It can definitely change the outcomes.”  

 Bandes gave some examples illustrating the importance of emotion in law. Talking about a case study she did, Bandes said vivid color photos of dead bodies made jurors angry and disgusted. She found that this anger not only affected their evaluations of the photo evidence, but it also damaged the jurors’ ability to evaluate other evidence in the case.  

 “They became so angry [that] they wanted to punish the defendant,” Bandes said. She added that these emotions led them to engage in a biased information search. 

 Bandes said that the belief that emotion does not belong in the legal system is contradicted by a growing consensus in every field that studies the dynamics of decision-making.  

 “None of those fields say that emotions always steer us in the right direction,” Bandes said.  

“But they do conclude that it’s not the enemy of reason, that it’s an essential part of the reasoning process.” 

 According to Bandes, evaluating emotions in law helps you decide whether they lead you to the right direction. “Putting emotion aside makes you lose the ability to evaluate it.” 

 Bandes also said that race and gender affect our evaluations of the credibility of others’ emotions. When men express anger, they seem commanding. When women express anger, they are found to be overly emotional, she explained.  

 Bandes then spoke about lawyer wellbeing. “There may be no other profession whose practitioners are required to deal with so much pain and so little support and guidance,” she said.  

 “We equate rational and rigorous thought with a lack of emotional awareness,” she added. “The result is that we lose information and coping skills that we need – both to practice law and to lead healthy integrated lives.” This lack of emotional awareness, according to Bandes, leads to consequences such as burnout and isolation. “It’s going to take a lot to make the changes,” Bandes said. “I think we really need to emphasize that morality and ethics and emotion are such an integral part of legal reasoning.”  

 After the lecture, student Adriana Montante, a graduate law student, said she agreed with Bandes on the importance of emotion in law. “I think it’s something that should be addressed more,” Montante said.  

 Bandes ended her lecture by emphasizing the importance of emotions in the legal system and calling on students to fight for this. “Let’s do better,” she concluded.