Collaborative Research Networks (CRNs) play a vital role within the Law and Society Association’s broader intellectual communities. CRNs provide a platform for LSA members to connect, exchange ideas, and collaborate with other scholars who share common interests. Through these networks, members not only organize sessions at the LSA Annual Meeting but also develop cross-disciplinary and cross-national research projects. CRNs help build deeper intellectual and professional connections among scholars, helping build a stronger sense of community within LSA and encouraging meaningful research collaborations.
CRNs can be based on a particular region (e.g., African Law and Society, East Asian Law and Society, South Asia), methodology (e.g., Critical Research on Race and the Law, Feminist Legal Theory), or subject area (e.g., Biotechnology, Bioethics and the Law, Citizenship and Immigration, Labor Rights, Regulatory Governance). Themes can be narrow or broad in scope.
For our new CRN Spotlight series, LSA will periodically showcase one of our 50+ Collaborative Research Networks. Read on to learn more about CRN 42: Law and Emotion.
The institution of law is commonly understood to be governed by logic and reason, immune to the effects of more unpredictable forces like emotion. In fact, for many, law’s seemingly impersonal nature is what lends it an air of authority and legitimacy.
Dr. Renata Grossi (University of Technology Sydney), however, challenges that perception.
“In my first job as a tutor in an Australian university, I overheard some colleagues discuss what law was and one of them said something like ‘law is about everything … except maybe love,’” she recalls. “I remember immediately thinking how wrong that was.”
This conversation catalyzed Grossi’s interest in the relationship between romantic love and legal discourse—and eventually, the broader role that emotions play in shaping our understanding of legal concepts such as objectivity.
“The dominant view is that emotion is contrary to how we understand law and its work. This stems from the view we have of emotion as being the opposite of, and a disruptor to, reason,” she explains.
Grossi isn’t the only academic decrying the exclusion of emotion from legal scholarship and discourse. Along with Dr. Shailesh Kumar (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu (Flinders University), she leads a Collaborative Research Network, CRN 42: Law and Emotion, through the Law and Society Association. The interdisciplinary group, which boasts a membership of approximately 130 members from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Sweden, has connected over their shared interest in exploring, rather than suppressing, the role that human emotions, in all of their messiness, play in understanding, interacting with, and administering law.
These scholars draw on a wide range of disciplines, such as neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and sociology. “In practice, being transparent about the role of emotion enables us to better understand, apply, and change law,” says Grossi. “The claim that emotion matters is also important politically and epistemologically.”
Grossi first encountered CRN 42 as her scholarly focus deepened. When she learned that many leading law and emotion scholars, like Kathryn Abrams (University of California, Berkeley) and Hila Keren (Southwestern Law School), were involved in the network, she decided to join. “I thought that it would be a wonderful way to develop my own thoughts of where my work ‘belonged’ and why it mattered,” she explained.
CRN 42’s sessions at the LSA Annual Meeting allowed her to do just that, and they continue to galvanize academic and career development for scholars at all stages of their careers. Each year, members gather to analyze the latest developments in law and emotion scholarship, engage in stimulating conversations about one another’s work, and leave with the intellectual tools, scholarly networks, and enthusiasm to advance their research. The Research Handbook on Law and Emotion (published in 2020), developed by CRN 42 members Susan Bandes (DePaul University), Jody Lynn Madeira (Indiana University), Kathryn Temple (Georgetown University), and Emily Kidd (York University), has its roots in this enriching environment.
At the 2024 LSA Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CRN 42 held the following panels and roundtables:
- Emotions in/and International Law
- Demeanor Evidence: A Mainstay of the Common Law System, a Window Into the Soul, or a Portal to Prejudice?
- Discourses of Crime and Law in the Global North and South
- How to Account for Trauma and Emotion in Legal Teaching: Practice, Pedagogy, and Unsettling Conversations
- Emotional and Legal Embodiments: The School, the Market, the Archive, and Indigenous Geographies
- New Methodological Approaches to Advance and Challenge Longstanding Theories
Judging and Emotions
- Experiencing Law’s Emotions Through Bodies and Stories
CRN 42 doesn’t just benefit its members, but regularly hold events outside of the LSA Annual Meeting that are open to scholars from all disciplines, free of charge. For instance, on October 29th, Naama Goldberg (Tel Aviv University) will be hosting a virtual seminar on “Remorse, Sentencing, and Goals of Criminal Punishment.” On December 5th, Eve Hanan (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) will host a virtual seminar on “Acting Guilty: Emotions as a Substitute for Proof in Pregnancy Crimes.”*
Many Law and Emotion members are also involved in other CRNs through LSA, serving the dual purpose of infusing law and emotion ideas into various sociolegal conversations while also bringing diverse insights from other fields into their law and emotion research. Members also share their ideas with new audiences whenever possible; recently, Grossi and Professor Bandes wrote blog pieces relating emotion to Western legal theory and the death penalty, respectively, for the National Law School of India’s Socio-Legal Review.
“We are keen to spread the word on the importance of emotion in law, and the creation of knowledge,” says Grossi.
Though busy, CRN 42 shows no signs of slowing down. At the 2025 LSA Annual Meeting in Chicago, the group plans to hold formal incubator sessions and lay the groundwork for more specialized research projects. If Grossi has anything to say about it, these tireless efforts will add much-needed dimension to the broader law and society conversation.
“In general, we would like to invite everyone to (at least temporarily) think about their work within the paradigm of emotion,” she says. “Even when researchers don’t see themselves as law and emotion scholars, this can be a fruitful enquiry which can lead to some interesting insights.”
*Readers interested in attending these seminars can email Dr. Renata Grossi at renata.grossi@uts.edu.au for a Zoom meeting link.